DragonFlyBSD Continues Gutting Its i386 Code

[phoronix]

Phoronix: DragonFlyBSD Continues Gutting Its i386 Code

The DragonFlyBSD operating system dropped its i386 install support back in 2014 with DragonFlyBSD 4.0 and since then has been focused on x86_64-only. Over the past two years or so they have gutted much of their i386-specific code from their kernel that is no longer needed for today's modern processors while over the weekend they got back to doing some more of that cleansing...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=DragonFlyBSD-Kill-More-i386

[rene]

not exactly amazing for people with nice vintage devices, such as the ultra portable Sony Vaio P: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suCj4eulTJg or Transmeta based OQO 01: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s22Rk1xW9ME

[aht0]

not exactly amazing for people with nice vintage devices, such as the ultra portable Sony Vaio P: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suCj4eulTJg or Transmeta based OQO 01: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s22Rk1xW9ME

386 is dead end. You can (still) use Linux for it but it dropping i386 support too is just question of time.

[rene]

386 is dead end. You can (still) use Linux for it but it dropping i386 support too is just question of time.

of course I know I can run my Linux on it ;-) though not exactly nice to drop support for ULV Atoms that just shipped some years ago – if Microsoft did things like this a decade ago everyone was crying fool, and said how much greater open source is due to older device support.

[aht0]

of course I know I can run my Linux on it ;-) though not exactly nice to drop support for ULV Atoms that just shipped some years ago – if Microsoft did things like this a decade ago everyone was crying fool, and said how much greater open source is due to older device support.

Using DragonFly on a Atom machine is like using C-130 Hercules for a forestry watch. Light biplane would be more sensible instead of trying to use quad-engine giant military transport plane.

[Guest]

I've wanted to give DragonFlyBSD a try, as it seems to be the only BSD-derivative that cares about what matters. The lack of i386 support made it impossible for me, as I wanted to see whether it's usable outside of virtual machines on real hardware, and the spare computer on which I felt like messing with it is a Celeron M machine. As of now, it seems like it could become the replacement for Linux (of course I'd have to run it with GNU userland to make it bearable) down the line, as I'm not too confident about the future of the Linux kernel.

[rene]

Using DragonFly on a Atom machine is like using C-130 Hercules for a forestry watch. Light biplane would be more sensible instead of trying to use quad-engine giant military transport plane.

Usually find car and airplane comparisons a bit out of place, and a nice BSD should be a useful options for yesteryears NAS, too. But sure, I noticed deleting support for yesteryears stuff is a hip and modern trend.

[Weasel]

lol'd at "infatuation with RISC-V"

[aht0]

Usually find car and airplane comparisons a bit out of place, and a nice BSD should be a useful options for yesteryears NAS, too. But sure, I noticed deleting support for yesteryears stuff is a hip and modern trend.

Take it this way.. Whole reason DragonFly was created by forking from FreeBSD was that Matthew Dillon disagreed principally how SMP should be implemented.

It's it's reason of existence and birth. And you complain because it can't be installed on single or at best, dual-core i386 Atom processor..? I'll ask it differently then: what's the big point of installing it on "yesteryear" Atom? You wanted file storage? Are you sure Atom's in question have enough raw horsepower in the first place?

Let's look at Atom N270. 1 core, 1,6GHz? What is it good for nowadays, really? Especially running OS with an hybrid kernel, which would be by nature bit less performant than OS with monolithic kernel. In fact this CPU could be insufficient even for a gigabit network link..

[boPt]

not exactly amazing for people with nice vintage devices, such as the ultra portable Sony Vaio P: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suCj4eulTJg or Transmeta based OQO 01: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s22Rk1xW9ME

I hate throwing away working hardware _but_ ARM are i386's lunch.