The Linux Kernel Looks To Drop Much Of The Remaining SPARC 32-bit CPU Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Linux Kernel Looks To Drop Much Of The Remaining SPARC 32-bit CPU Support

It's just not old wired and wireless networking drivers being removed from the mainline Linux kernel but as part of some winter-time cleaning a set of patches have been posted that would remove much of the remaining SPARC32 support for old 32-bit Sun workstations...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-2024-SPARC32-Sun-4M-4D

[fitzie]

i remember running linux on a sun4m ss10 back in the day. I also remember the dave miller vs bryan cantril retort.

It's basically davem talking about how superior linux is (true) and bryan did him dirty, will not repeat it here, but here's a link (scroll to the bottom)

https://archive.is/GTZwE

[jabl]

Ah yes, that exchange was classic.

[microcode]

Does Solaris even still support 32-bit SPARC? Does Illumos?
I guess this core is for some super niche industry (euro aerospace?) that had a bunch of SPARC32 code running on Linux. Are there any publicly purchasable products that integrate it?

[stormcrow]

Does Solaris even still support 32-bit SPARC? Does Illumos?
I guess this core is for some super niche industry (euro aerospace?) that had a bunch of SPARC32 code running on Linux. Are there any publicly purchasable products that integrate it?

Neither Oracle Solaris nor Illumos support SPARC32. Outside of legacy hardware contracts pretty sure Oracle has mostly stopped supporting SPARC in general. A quick glance of OpenIndiana and other Illumos distros suggests that SPARC64 is on its way out with them as well. SPARC32 hasn't been a thing for workstations even longer than x86-32 has been obsolete. Even so, there were a number of limitations on real SPARC 32bit systems that x86-32 didn't have, notably SunStation 4Ms iirc but there were others with RAM limitation issues as well, that makes them problematic with OS support. I can't blame Linux kernel developers for wanting to jettison support. Retro enthusiasts and legacy users will be running the OS the system originally came with rather than Linux. When SPARC32 workstations & servers were a thing, Linux was not [a thing]. In the case of aerospace with hardened hardware, it'll be the software it was certified to run, no non-certified updates are allowed (because certification is an atomic process - the whole unit must retain its integrity). It's unlikely any of them will have modern Linux kernels and user space - especially on any spacecraft already in orbit.

I doubt there's any new hardware the public can purchase that isn't in twilight support category that still uses SPARC32, assuming you want to spend the mega funds to buy radiation hardened hardware and you know how to write those programs.

[Estranged1906]

Unlike Itanium, at least there's still NetBSD: https://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/sparc/

[microcode]

It's unlikely any of them will have modern Linux kernels and user space - especially on any spacecraft already in orbit.

Frankly it's terrifying to me that there's anything worth running on a radiation hardened processor that's running on Linux.