9 Feb
2021
9 Feb
'21
1:05 p.m.
On 2/8/2021 9:55 PM, John Gilmore wrote:
Henry Bent <henry.r.bent(a)gmail.com> wrote:
i386 has been demoted on FreeBSD:
https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2021-January/002006.ht…
I don't think there's any change on NetBSD, no idea about OpenBSD but I
assume they're the same.
In all honest, I don't think that backwards compatibility has ever been
that great on Linux -at least not for the last twenty or so years, in my
(limited) experience. It's not like Solaris where you could build on 2.4
and there's a good chance it will run on 11 or at least 10.
Apple loves to move quickly and
abandon
compatibility, and in that respect it's an interesting counterpoint to
Linux or a *BSD where you can have decades old binaries that still run.
That was
true decades ago, but no longer. In the intervening time, all
the major Linux distributions have stopped releasing OS's that support
32-bit machines. Even those that support 32-bit CPUs have often
desupported the earlier CPUs (like, what was wrong with the 80386?).
Essentially NO applications require 64-bit address spaces, so arguably
if they wanted to lessen their workload, they should have desupported
the 64-bit architectures (or made kernels and OS's that would run on
both from a single release). But that wouldn't give them the
gee-whiz-look-at-all-the-new-features feeling.
I ran 32-bit OS releases on all my 64-bit x86 hardware for years. They
ran faster and smaller than the amd64 versions, and also ran old
binaries for more than a decade. But their vendors and support teams
decided that doing the release-engineering to keep them running was more
work than pulling the plug.
Even Fedora has desupported the One Laptop Per Child hardware now -- no
new releases for millions of kids! And desupported all the other cheap
Intel mobile CPUs, let alone your typical desktop 80386, 80486, or
Pentium. Have you tried running Linux on a machine without a GPU
these days? It's truly sad that to gain stupid animated window tricks,
they broke compatability with millions of existing systems.
Here's one overview of the niche distros that still have x86 support:
https://fossbytes.com/best-lightweight-linux-distros/
Even those are dropping like flies, e.g. Ubuntu MATE now says "For older
hardware based on i386. Supported until April 2021", i.e. only til next
month! The PuppyLinux.com web site is now a 404. Etc.
(I'm not up on what the BSD releases are doing.)
John