Arch Linux Ends i686 Package Support Today

[pininety]

This doesnt talk about 32bit arm, only the PC 32bit Hardware.
32bit arm is still way more common and still supported on the distros supporting arm at all.

And I did not talk about 32bit arm? The Via Eden Processor is a x86 processor?
Or were you confused because I mentioned the Arch ARM project?

[oleyska]

Even last Pentium 4 generations had amd64 support. Maybe some are still on Bartons, Tualatins, Thunderbirds or even Mendocinos... But there are other distros for them.

have you powered on an core 2 duo powered computer?
I sincerely hope no-one runs anything older than that.

IF one has RPI 3 power and better i/o throughput you're better off than a non 64 bit system like P4 or socket A AMD stuff in terms of performance so I really can't see this being an issue.
Systems that run the older hardware due to use case is probably not upgrading out of fear of breaking stuff.

[Masush5]

MultiLib on Arch doesn't carry many libraries anyway. At best, you get a 32-bit glibc and some additional minimal stuff.

On Debian, OTOH, MultiArch which allows you to install any library directly from the 32-bit repositories which is also why Debian is not going to drop 32-bit x86 in the near future (why should they anyway).

And since most Steam games on Linux are still 32-bit binaries, Arch users will have to use a 32-bit Ubuntu runtime (chroot) to run most Steam games on their distribution.

Hmm... "pacman -Q | grep lib32 | wc -l" tells me that i currently have 166 32-bit libraries installed on my 64-bit arch, i'd call that plenty. Also there is no need for an ubuntu chroot, steam ships it's own runtime and there is also the steam-native-runtime package which pulls in all (most?) 32 bit libs steam games expect.

[starshipeleven]

Hmm... "pacman -Q | grep lib32 | wc -l" tells me that i currently have 166 32-bit libraries installed on my 64-bit arch, i'd call that plenty. Also there is no need for an ubuntu chroot, steam ships it's own runtime and there is also the steam-native-runtime package which pulls in all (most?) 32 bit libs steam games expect.

Well, Steam runtime is a bit like an Ubuntu chroot though.

[Masush5]

Well, Steam runtime is a bit like an Ubuntu chroot though.

Guess you could see it like that. However, the libs you pull in if you install "steam-native-runtime" are not just copies from the ubuntu archive and still work out pretty well. I personally haven't had any major issues with steam games on arch.

[stiiixy]

I still like to fire up my old P3-1200 on occassion to see how quickly 'the web' wrecks it. The CPU is generally not the issue however, as the RAM limit 512mb on the motherboard. The old IDE drives are obviously a limit in throughput for any serious task.

Runs distros like Puppy perfectly fine however. ATI Radeon Mach 64MB RAM.

[geearf]

Too bad, steam with native runtime depends on many x86 packages, which will be, at best, in AUR

Hmm, no?
This changes nothing for x86_64 systems, we don't lose any package (nor do we gain any...).
steam native depends on multilib packages not x86 ones.

MultiLib on Arch doesn't carry many libraries anyway. At best, you get a 32-bit glibc and some additional minimal stuff.

On Debian, OTOH, MultiArch which allows you to install any library directly from the 32-bit repositories which is also why Debian is not going to drop 32-bit x86 in the near future (why should they anyway).

And since most Steam games on Linux are still 32-bit binaries, Arch users will have to use a 32-bit Ubuntu runtime (chroot) to run most Steam games on their distribution.

Multilib has 285 packages, a bit more than you expected I guess.

As for the 32 chroot, hmmm no? I use a 64b Arch system and run Steam games with no issue.
I don't even understand where you get stuff like that from.

[Anvil]

As an Arch user, I also approve of this. For a cutting-edge rolling-release distro, it's oddly stable. Removing i686 ought to help further improve that stability, and, maybe even result in updates to be released faster.

I wonder how many i686 users there actually are. Sucks for anyone still running a P4 or older, but honestly, why bother?

now if only Microsoft stop supporting old 32bit technology aswell . people have had long enough time to get a cheap 64bit PC .

[Girolamo_Cavazzoni]

stiiixy
Interstingly I have the opposite situation with an Atom N450 with 2 GiB of RAM where the CPU is clearly the bottleneck at any given task. Websites are mostly crippled by the 1024x600 resolution, but since some adapt to small, low resolution screens (thanks to early iPads) this is not a big problem. Anyway it has amd64 and still runs happily (although slowly) through any workload. In Germany we sometimes speak of "Entschleunigung".

[kpedersen]

I prefer to test my 32-bit builds on a 32-bit build of Linux rather than 64-bit running a 32-bit compatibility layer. Granted I would never choose Arch** as my "test distro" but surely there are some developers that are a little bit left in the mud now?

**Not because I have anything against Arch (perhaps it relies a little too much on an internet connection), it is just the fact that i686 was their lowest 32-bit arch for intel.