From: Will Senn <will.senn@gmail.com>
To: John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com>, Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] Macs and future unix derivatives
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2021 01:17:21 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <eb0963c7-5eb3-5d91-4ce4-25a46fcc7db5@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <5372.1612853750@hop.toad.com>
On 2/9/21 12:55 AM, John Gilmore wrote:
> Henry Bent <henry.r.bent@gmail.com> 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
>
Sigh... 32bit will be 2nd tier in FreeBSD 13 :)
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-02-09 7:17 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 50+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-02-08 18:11 Will Senn
2021-02-08 18:21 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-08 18:32 ` Justin Coffey
2021-02-08 18:39 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-09 1:59 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-02-12 13:48 ` Angel M Alganza
2021-02-08 18:42 ` Henry Bent
2021-02-09 6:55 ` John Gilmore
2021-02-09 7:05 ` Michael Huff
2021-02-16 22:55 ` Greg A. Woods
2021-02-09 7:17 ` Will Senn [this message]
2021-02-09 19:02 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-02-10 1:34 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-09 22:59 ` Wesley Parish
2021-02-08 18:43 ` Dan Stromberg
2021-02-12 13:39 ` Angel M Alganza
2021-02-08 18:45 ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-02-25 22:45 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-02-08 20:07 ` Al Kossow
2021-02-09 5:10 ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-02-09 7:42 ` [TUHS] QNX John Gilmore
2021-02-09 11:03 ` Robert Brockway
2021-02-09 18:24 ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-02-09 20:18 ` Jose R Valverde via TUHS
2021-02-09 14:05 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-09 3:58 [TUHS] Macs and future unix derivatives M Douglas McIlroy
2021-02-09 4:07 ` Adam Thornton
2021-02-09 4:13 ` Will Senn
2021-02-09 5:21 ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-02-09 5:29 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-02-09 6:37 ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-02-09 16:13 ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-02-09 17:31 ` John Cowan
2021-02-09 19:06 ` Chet Ramey
2021-02-10 2:31 ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-02-09 19:00 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-02-10 1:41 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-10 1:52 ` George Michaelson
2021-02-10 2:24 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-10 2:44 ` Dan Cross
2021-02-10 3:10 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-10 20:03 ` Kevin Bowling
2021-02-10 2:57 ` Warner Losh
2021-02-10 2:56 ` Warner Losh
2021-02-10 3:02 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-10 3:53 ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-02-09 11:34 ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-02-09 18:29 ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-02-09 8:30 Bakul Shah
2021-02-09 12:22 M Douglas McIlroy
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