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[72.42.167.101]) by smtp.googlemail.com with ESMTPSA id mv14sm1655077pjb.0.2021.02.08.23.05.58 for (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256 bits=128/128); Mon, 08 Feb 2021 23:05:59 -0800 (PST) To: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org References: <5372.1612853750@hop.toad.com> From: Michael Huff Message-ID: <13ded1a4-d717-c57c-5168-0f1f44ca4b5b@gmail.com> Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2021 22:05:57 -0900 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.7.1 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <5372.1612853750@hop.toad.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Language: en-US Subject: Re: [TUHS] Macs and future unix derivatives X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On 2/8/2021 9:55 PM, John Gilmore wrote: > Henry Bent wrote: >> 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 i386 has been demoted on FreeBSD: https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-announce/2021-January/002006.html 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.