Why is 13.1 RC1 still compiled for 486 support?
 

I read this on Patrick's twitter:

http://twitter.com/volkerdi

Would the devs mind sharing why the change hasn't been made? I'm guessing there must be a lot of Slackware users with 15-20 year old computers that want to run the latest software. :p

I'm not a Slackware dev but my guess is that the minimal gains to be had from restricting the arch just haven't outweighed the cost of cutting off entire classes of computers from current Slackware.

Seems like a moot point to me - most people who care about such things will be on x86_64 and using Slack64 anyway. I'd just leave it alone. No reason for Slack to drop it if the tools still support it. 486 should probably be handled like 386 was.

I still have a K6 and a Pentium, though I don't use them. I'm sure many more active souls have similar machinery running as file servers or whatever. However, I think 8.1 still gets updated and 13.x certainly will for years to come, so they could keep running 486 Slacks. So I don't see either move being too catastrophic and neither bothers me too much.

Well, I am very happy that PV supports older hardware. My main Slackware work station is an Intel Core Duo, but, I do have several PIII units happily running 13.0 and -current. :)

For what it's worth, PIII is considered i686 generation.

I know. I'm glad that PV is supporting older machines like my PIII units by maintaining the 32 bit development line. :)

Just a couple of months ago we had someone report that he or she was running Slackware on a 486.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-sites-789086/

He also said that his 486 has 2 gigs of RAM and is running Windows 7.

AND that it boots and runs faster than his girlfriends box with 4 gigs of ram and dual core processor.

I'm not currently a slackware user (though it was my first Linux, on a 386SX, a dozen years back!). But I do have a couple of quite serviceable 800 mHz systems with VIA cpus which are 1 or 2 instructions short of being 686es, which I use as test systems for new Ubuntu and Debian releases. Generally I try live CDs first, before installing. Some distros have live CDs which are 686-only - which means I don't bother to try them.

IMHO install disks should have 486 kernels, with the option to install or build whatever level of kernel works on a given system.

I'm glad to know that you can start with a 486 kernel on Slackware - I might be inspired to install Slackware on one of my VIA systems, then.

Lack of replies from Slackware users to his query perhaps?

Eric

My thoughts: Since you're only guessing.. you are probably NOT a 486/586 user. Since I too am not a 486 or 585 user, that makes us 2 not the people Pat is hoping to get a reply from.

486: We all know what those where.
586: Pentium, series I: you know, the 60 75Mhz up to 300 Mhz
(Pentium, derived from Penta => 5)

And from Pentium Pro and II up = minimal i686

I vaguely remember I had a Cyrix/IBM 6x86 P166+.. I must have worked on that machine most of my university life. It's been for ages. I presume there probably won't be many of them left,. I, personally, can't imagine I will in the nearby future obtain/get my hand on/find anything pre-Pentium III, and do anything with it, other than use it as a door-stop.

If Pat won't get any input from real 486/586 users,.. He's got my blessings :)

You also have to remember that in the developing world the computers tend to be older than in the more developed nations. It is only fair to give everyone a chance to use Slackware.

samac

Hey I never thought of that! I responded to Pat's original tweet at the time going along with him possibly scrapping 486 support - (as did others) - now I feel bad - just as well he made his own mind up anyway :doh: !

In the developing world, computers tend to be older.. 15+ years older? I doubt, but still: If so: should 'they' be running '-current' or could 13.x be 'new' enough,, for the following 5 years?

PS: I drive 28+ years old cars, so yeah, I know nice it is if old stuff is still supported (brakediscs, pads, fuel, timingbelts and stuff).. but you won't hear me complaining they haven't offered me A/C, cupholders, airbags or a-symetrical foldable rear-seats :)

I have a 25MHz I486SX, with 8MB RAM and a 250MB harddrive and I use this oldie as a home router.

But I seriously doubt that it can run Slackware 13.1 with KDE-4.4.3 as desktop. ;)

We should live with idea that a modern Linux, like Slackware-13.1, it's too bigger and want too much resources to be used in a i486 hardware without bloodish tuning.

For older hardware you need special designed distributions, with a very little resources requirement.

I don't see the sense to tune a blue whale with several gigabytes size for a target that never by usable. The I486 target I seriously doubt to have sense.

However, a I586 target is common sense, to rearch a reasonable old hardware.

Older versions of Slackware run very well indeed on old hardware. I ran Slackware 10.2 on PII 266 MHz with 128 MB RAM and XFce; it ran very well.
I started with Slackware 10.0, but, Slackware 10.2 is my oldest screen shot. :)

http://www2.citytel.net/~gnielsen/snapshot5.jpg

Edit, added later. My oldest Slackware box at the moment is a PIII 667 MHz IBM 300 PL, it has a 20 GB HD and 256 MB RAM; it is running Slackware 13.1 RC1 (Fluxbox). :)

I had a 200 MHz Pentium computer (that is, an i586) which I got rid of last year. Computers that old can not be run with the new X, you can only use them as a router, ftp server etc, but even for those purposes it may not make much sense to keep them around, given that say, a PIII is also very cheap now and much more capable. A simple server doesn't need kernel 2.6 anyway, one can use one of those 2.4 based minimal distros for old computers. I also have a 256 MB PIII 733 MHz system on which 13.0 is quite usable with XFCE. It could be even better if Slack is compiled for 686. I think 586 can be skipped because it only includes PI and P Pro which are basically in the same category as 486 in terms of their capability to handle modern software.

I am almost always behind the curve with respect to hardware and remain "in the game" only because I am able to extend the use of older hardware with various Linux versions - primarily Slackware the last few years.

So I always appreciate the fact that support remains available for my older boxes in new releases - even if I don't update everything. I think that dropping support for older hardware would ultimately affect myself and others if only because it draws the line - "this far and no further"...

Every passing iteration without drawing that line is ultimately useful to someone, and has been literally "lifesaving" to me at times!

I still run 3 Pentium 120 MHZ notebooks and a couple of sub 300MHZ desktops (albeit with older Mandrake distros). Those are not likely to be updated beyond their current state, but they could be if I found it necessary... and they are still very useful to us!

On the other hand, I have a couple of PIII 600-800MHZ notebooks and desktops that are running Slackware 12.1 and in full time daily use. They will likely be updated to 13.x at some point. It is nice to think they can keep going a little longer, too!

Thanks to all who make it possible!

Really. Many switches and routers are 80486'es running Slackware. The FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7170 which I am using is an example.

I seriously doubt that FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN 7170 boxes ran the kernel 2.6.33.4 and KDE-4.4.3 with all 3D effects enabled...

In fact, I think that your switches are produced by a company who use a very customized Slackware Linux.

I do wonder how many people are not running Pentium Pro or better CPUs.
It might be time to draw a line in the sand for the next Slackware release. Perhaps using pentium2 as march/mtune a sensible choice. This will actually introduce some SMID code to the applications. Pentium3 might be too high as this adds sse SMID instructions. SSE wasn't introduced to AMD until the Palomino core (XP/MP). The extremely popular T-Bird core does not have SSE instructions.

I personally have and use daily a PII 450 mhz with Slackware -current. And have seen enough PII's in the wild to faithfully say they are still used by many people. Not to mention our 3 PIII laptops. Would it hurt my feelings if I could not install Slackware 14.0 on my PII? Not at all, it's really starting to become EOL. Given the fact I recently purchased a MB+CPU+RAM (2.4 Celeron, 512MiB) for $30, there's no reason to honestly keep the old PII around. I'm not so sure other PII users would agree though.

For those that don't know, Slackware is already optimized for i686. Software is compiled with -O2 -march=i486 -mtune=i686. The kernel itself is compiled for i686. i686 is Pentium Pro, a cpu with no SMID instructions (no mmx, sse, sse2, sse*....). MMX was introduced after the Pentium Pro, and back ported to the Pentium i586 class. Simply changing the Slackware compile options to -march=i586/i686 gains nothing. You can change the march to pentium-mmx and not alienate some older i586 CPUs. But honestly, how many people actually run Slackware on CPUs that old? PII/PIII I can fully understand, but anything older than that?

In fact, Slackware is more widely used as production servers than home desktops. KDE is not so widely installed than you thought.

Really? I'd like to see where you got that data.

Geeks around me. My old alumni (commercial website maintainers). Of course the sampling in rather incomplete. They are very few people, but have many computers.

I myself use 2 Slackware desktops (office desktop and personal laptop) and one private server. I also did setup a Slack desktop and will (next month) setup a few servers for an astronomical observatory which is under construction.

One reason why I see fewer desktops maybe: Our (Chinese) government is standardized on Windows. We often get into troubles if we don't use the same. For example: Linux desktop users cannot apply for national natual science foundation.

Hi,

Up until a few weeks ago when it died I used a 200MHz Pentium system as a simple web server. Command line only, no X. I replaced it with a Pentium 4 based system.

Randy

I would think Slackware as one of the well maintained modern(as in it is still up to date) distros that can run well on old hardware. would be better served by maintaining this compatibility rather than sacrificing it for a minimal speed increase.

Agreed!

And anyway, don't the SMP kernels take advantage of Pentium features if they're available?

Keep in mind that even though Slackware is built to run on the 486 architecture, it is optimized for the 686.

Furthermore, there is very little difference in code produced for the 486 and that for a Pentium (586) -- almost all of the changes in the 586 were internal to chip. So while Pentiums offered improvements, there was nothing really required on the software side to benefit from those improvements.

Moving up to the 686 family, the problem was kind of the opposite: there were lots of changes to the instruction set and thus compiler switches could result in significantly different code being generated, however, the enhancements were rather inconsistently implemented across the various 686 devices offered. To fully benefit from the improvements available, it would be necessary to specify not just that the target was 686, but what particular model (Pentium II, AMD K6, Cyrix, VIA, etc) was being built for.

It's not so much that support for 486-level devices is profoundly beneficial, but that it's just not very costly (from a performance and code size standpoint) to provide such support relative to the 686 family of processors.

I'm personally holding out for slackware 8086 ;)

It's hard to justify a machine switched on 24/7 that can't idle. So there's many reasons to move to a full 686 architecture,being green is one of them.

I recently retired my old k6 because of it, hard to justify 100+ watts especially compared to my laptop's 20-30 watts.

Now that you've posted this, somebody is going to do it. :-D

Hi, my desktop pc is an athlon 62x2 with 2 GB of ram and is running Slackware 13.0 with KDE. For experimentation i use a P IV 1.6 GHz, Slack 13.0, no X. Asterisk server Phenom 9550 2 GB ram. Also Slack 13.0 without X.
I also have an old PII 400 MHz with 64 MB, Celeron 333 MHz and until recently a 150 MHz PI. Those three also running Slackware 13.0 without X and working as headless servers.
Those old machines are doing a very good job and i have no plans of upgrading them. They need to be secure and lightweight. I think that's done by running recent versions of software and getting from the distro the essential parts.
From my point of view it would be great to run the latest and greatest version of Slackware, having in mind the limitations of hardware.
Thanks!

Gustavo
Patagonia
Argentina

(First post! Sorry for my bad english...)

In fact, your single i586 machine was (until recently) the Pentium machine and today all your machines run i686 code happy.

I seriously doubt that a i686 based Slackware Linux 13.2 will disturb you and you confirm my opinion that a i586 target is more than enough today. ;)

It's a long time since I last saw a working 486 desktop, but 486s are still common in industrial PCs and embedded single board computers - you can still buy them today.

Many of these run Slackware

Industrial PCs and embedded single board computers are produced by companies. They have for sure a software department (read some engineers that earn money).

I don't see why The Great P should support companies that I seriously doubt that give something back.

These companies should pay it's software department properly, not to wait from Slackware to make their work.

So, the "industrial PC" argument fail.

Besides, I doubt that such hardware uses vanilla Slackware. They probably do a lot of tweaking and I'm sure they can do a recompile to support i486 if they want to.

SBC users often give back code, both to the kernel source and various applications.
They are maybe more likely to buy a dvd from PV than home users too.

Embedded designs have much longer production lifetimes than desktop machines. This is why you can still buy 486 boards - for a >3 year old design running Slackware 11.x
If I did a new design, I would use a Pentium M or Atom

This means that the industrial/embedded community does not need 486 support in 13.1+, just don't drop it retrospectively in older releases

Have you tried Slax? I think its the mini Slackware.

http://www.slax.org/

Did anyone notice that you can't install stock Slackware on i486 and i586 anyhow? The kernel is build for i686 since ages - and as it seemed to please everyone it sounds reasonable to build the rest for i686 too, doesn't it?

What?

This is from Slackware-current 32bit

You seem to run a different slackware than me:

Note: firefox, thunderbird, xine and linux are compiled for i686 in slackware at least since the beginning of 2008.

Only the SMP kernel are compiled for i686 and higher, the non-SMP kernel is still compiled for i486.

From the Slackware-HOWTO:
Eric

Thx, Bob. I see. As the same HowTo strongly recommends to install the SMP kernel even on machines with single core and as a default install installs header files for the smp kernel not for the non-smp one, I never installed those non-smp kernels.

Firefox and thunderbird aren't compiled by Slackware at all. The Mozilla Corporation has issues, so Slackware just repackages their binaries. You missed the jre (i586) which is similar. Linux has been discussed. And that leaves xine, which has its own issues. Mplayer might still work on a 486 (in terms of cpu, though I'm not sure what could usefully be done with it - maybe play some audio).

Firefox, Thunderbird (perhaps Seamonkey) for x86_64 compiled from source.

True (seamonkey, too), but we were talking about x86.

BWAHAHAHA!

I was curious what hapen if I try to install the current Slackware (13.1-RC2) in my i486 box, at 25MHz, 8MB RAM, 250MB harddrive!

The result of trying to boot the installer's i486 kernel iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiisssssssssssss:

Not enough memory to load the specified image.

Well, the installer will NOT start! YOU CAN'T BOOT THE INSTALLATION CD! Bye, my oldie, you can't have inside the up-to-date Slackware! The current Slackware is NOT compatible with your old ass!

sorry for the question, but what do you want to run on it with 8 megs of ram (beside the kernel, I mean)? ;)

Well, I use my oldie as a home router, it connect to my Internet provider via PPPOE and serves 4 computers in a local network.

I use a minimal Slackware 9.1 installed years ago and use a very stripped down kernel. If I remember right, I worked few days to create a per-hardware customized 2.4 kernel...

Anyways, the i486 zealots graciously ignore what i486 sistems are, ie my oldie was latest hardware in it's good days. :)

8MB is not a typical configration for 486 machines, and anyone wanting to use slackware on a 486 would probably have at least 16mb, or more likely 32.

The amount of memory in your computer has nothing to do with the support for your CPU.
The installer requires 128 MB RAM in Slackware 13.1 but you do not have to use the installer to install Slackware...

Having said that, you gain nothing by wanting to run Slackware 13.1 or any other modern Linux distro on 8 MB RAM unless you strip it a lot.

Eric