Mesa Considers Raising CPU Support Baseline

[ezst036]

Oddly enough I remember when Linux was for enthusiasts with weird, wonderful and "ancient" hardware.

That's why so many "come out of the woodwork" as others are pointing out, because people with less than current gen hardware made a home here.

[dreamer_]

I protest this change. I own a Pentium 2 and an old Nvidia TNT card and i want to still use the latest MESA on my hardware. I don't want to change the compile flags and i don't want to use a distro made for old machines or be stuck in MESA 21.1, there are so many features i could be using, so many optimizations and bug fixes! I thought Linux was made for old computers, wasn't it? I hate you people for excluding such fine hardware from working, this is outrageous. I am going back to Windows XP SP3 that could barely run on my machine anyway.

You got me there for a second But you joke - I had one user sending me almost exactly the same message regarding the FLOSS project I maintain when I decided to change default SSE flags. It was his "ultimate retro gaming machine" - everything older was trash (according to him), and everything newer was trash as well.

[MadeUpName]

Some have also suggested enabling SSE3 / SSSE3 by default for Mesa builds while at it and would still allow for hardware 10~15 years old to still run fine with Mesa's default builds.

It would allow some hardware that is 10-15 years old to run but there is lots only 5 years old hardware that wouldn't. Having said that the only box I have that would be effected would be my HTPC and it really doesn't need to be upgraded as it will be retired long before their is HDR/10bit+ support available in Linux and I don't see any other upgrades coming that would benefit it.

What I am worried about is the idea that they are making a policy decision that your new PC will only be supported for 3 years and then it will be declared obsolete and no longer supported. In a world of hardware shortages and green messages every where it doesn't make sense. Perhaps some one can post some data showing the massive benefits these changes will make that will justify putting us all on a constantly faster upgrade path. On the flip side the hardware manufacturers should stop selling systems that are going to be obsoleted in just a few years.

[Serafean]

So the takeaway from this thread is than no one reads the articles themselves.

They are discussing "Default compiler flags". you want new mesa on older hardware? Not a problem, just recompile. The odd bug might appear, but hey, shit happens, right?

[Ronshere]

First they took away my HDD
Now I have to toss my Pentium 100

[Desti]

Simply stated, there are lots of industrial systems, that are build into large objects like buildings running things like heating/cooling, power distribution, ventilation etc. Those are not easily replaced, were meant to last decades or longer and use some sort of display for interaction. The software on those can be upgraded, but replacing the hardware is usually almost impossible unless you replace the entire building installation.

Why would industrial systems need the latest MESA, if they need MESA at all? Isn't it good enough to freeze an old MESA stage and continue only security fixes for it for support such old systems? Any new software, that would require new MESA will not run on that old hardware anyways.

[Vistaus]

I'll take it however I want it.


Of course it was obvious to me. Was it not obvious to you that I was being sarcastic?
And clever? LOL. Maybe blurry picture of Linus' middle finger was funny/clever the first 1,000 times I saw it. Now it's just an annoying waste of pixels, especially if it's posted in a vaguely related (at best) topic to what inspired blurry middle finger in the first place.

[tildearrow]

No, the impact should be very positive for all but the very oldest systems.

I am done here. I won't report any more typos on Phoronix for 22 days.

[AmericanLocomotive]

I'm 200% sure those systems aren't using mainline Mesa anyway and if they do, it's an old version.

Exactly. There are so many people coming up with contrived scenarios here for justifying supporting ancient hardware, it's mind boggling. As someone who spent a lot of time working in industry, I can promise you that industrial systems are NOT running bleeding edge kernels or mesa. Industrial systems are typically built to a hardware/software spec, and will continue to use that same software stack until the day the machine dies. We had brand new CNC machines in 2019, using Siemens controls, that were still on 2.6 series Linux kernels.

The only time industrial equipment EVER gets updated is either to fix a critical bug that effects the operation of the machine, or to potentially fix a security flaw if it's a network connected piece of equipment. But even then, it will be a custom build still based on the original kernel by the OEM.

Oddly enough I remember when Linux was for enthusiasts with weird, wonderful and "ancient" hardware.

Since when did it change to only become about consumers and gamers who should probably be running Windows anyway?

Sure, they can regress the "baseline" all they want. Other projects that do happen to want to keep the old PPC MacBook or SGI machines will simply pick up the slack and fix the brokenness (probably just a build time flag anyway).

Linux did gain a lot of popularity for running well on *old* hardware. However, CPUs without SSE2 are not *old*, they are positively archaic at this point. The last mainstream (Intel, AMD) CPUs without SSE2 were released ~18-20 years ago.

That's like complaining in 2001 - in the era of Pentium 4s (with SSE2, mind you...) and Athlon XPs that you couldn't compile Linux 2.2.19 on your Commodore 64. That's the kind of time span we're talking about here. It's time to move on and start developing code and applications that actually target modern hardware.

[Vistaus]

Simply stated, there are lots of industrial systems, that are build into large objects like buildings running things like heating/cooling, power distribution, ventilation etc. Those are not easily replaced, were meant to last decades or longer and use some sort of display for interaction. The software on those can be upgraded, but replacing the hardware is usually almost impossible unless you replace the entire building installation.

I'm 200% sure those systems aren't using mainline Mesa anyway and if they do, it's an old version.