The next release, will be or not will be i586? That's the question!
 

Like everyone can see, looking to Slackware-current ChangeLog, almost every new package is into ARCH i586.

Also, spectacular, very important packages like GCC suite, even BASH and util-linux are i586. Yet, some can argue that the Mother of All Packages, GLIBC, is still i486. Yes, but the changes are enough invasive to make Slackware current as Operating System to be unable to run in an ol'good i486 CPU.

So, my questions are if Slackware Team finally decided to jump in the i586 bandwagon and say goodbye to i486 World, and if the next release will be first of its kind, as an glorious Slackware i586?

To note that I'm not against this optimization movement, contrary, I salute that wise decision which I consider being thoughtfully for A.D. 2015.

Finally, please, Slackware Team, find a excuse and do an i586 (re)build for X.org and KDE4. That will do a significant "snappification" for KDE4, especially in systems driven by relatively old processors like a Pentium 4 on Socket 478...

The old guru sat on top of the mountain with his young pupil. The wise elder guru said to his student, "One must not wish for things youngling, for it is a mixed blessing!" The pupil asked the elder guru, "Master why should one not wish for things?" The great elder wise in his years turned and replied, "Wish in one hand, and take a dump in the other, but be forewarned my pupil, you may end up with a handful of crap faster than what you wished for."

My dear frenemy ReaperX7, you are kind to explain what connection is between subject of this thread and your gibberish?

The next release, who the hell still needs this i{3,4,5,6}86 junk? That's the question!

Cheers

Well, You can still buy motherboards with AMD Geode LX CPUs such as ALIX system boards for instance.
AMD Geode LX cpus are I586 cpu with one or two i686 instructions added.

i586 (pentium)
pentium-mmx
pentiumpro/i686 (year 1995)
pentium2
pentium3
pentium4

you have a pentium4, 5 Generation newer than you want, but you want compiler flags that target pre 1995 hardware.
why? just because?

i686 with one or two mmx/sse/3dnow features
not that it it important, even if it would be nice if some of the OLPC kids would start to play with Slackware

Most distros have been 686 for quite some time, (some also offered 486, but not many), but I would think that any machine older than a Pentium2 is dead, & most likely PII are too slow to perform anything but basic tasks.

Edit: My oldest machine is a 3GHz P4 with 1GB ram.

Take a look at Pat's note in the gcc.SlackBuild:

http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackwar...gcc.SlackBuild

Last year, I pulled out my 486 laptop to see if I could perform an update, but it was dead. It had been a bit of a novelty for being still usable for a recentish slackware. The caps must have finally gone after 20 years. Time to move on.

I have a first gen pentium laptop that is getting very nervous right now.

It means this: You can ask, but don't expect it. Patrick will make the decision to see if the architecture is in need of change.

486 is a simple baseline optimization, but it's done because there are a few people that may be using old hardware for low level things. You can use these old computers for things like file storage servers, routers, firewalls, print servers, and various other things that don't require a 64-core 64-bit CPU, 512GB RAM, RAID-10 array, beastmachina from the netherworld.

If you look at the packages optimized for 586 and 686, they are mainly aimed at desktop PC users mainly. Out of the box, the system is server ready even if it's a 486 based server.

They're changing as a package is updated or has been rebuilt for some other reason.
Will all packages be rebuilt just to build for i586? Highly unlikely.

So, in your opinion, as Insider, the next Slackware release will be something like a mix with i486 and i586 packages, which, guaranteed, need, at minimum, a i586 machine to work?

I think that's likely.

Sorry, my dear frenemy, looks like that you are read the ChangeLog some years ago, last time. I understand, you are busy with your FromScratch experiments, and you comment there from memories... ;)

So, I have news for you: bash, coreutils, utils-linux, etc..., even the LAMP stack are i586-zed right now. Slackware current can't run in a i486 machine, as server, anymore. Is i586-zed with no hope. :hattip:

In other hand, permit me to cite Our Dear Leader: the i486 is not a baseline optimization, IT is an Constraint.

Can we avoid Intel's sinkhole bug only compile software in i486 or i586? Will it help to remedy this problem?

No. It's etched onto the silicon.
See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/08...el_processors/
(please read all three pages, especially 'Fixes and mitigations' on page 3)

At least x86_64 has some level of sanity.

I wish it'd be the same for your posts... :)

Okay are we flinging mud now like retarded idiot children or talking the possibility and viability of x86 based architecture for the future of supporting various hardware?

Dunno... Depends on you, as it seems forum usage is that the OP "owns" the thread and show the direction with his questions or affirmations. You seems to always change topic for your own interest, I can't talk for you man.

Cheers.

Please stay on the topic, thankyou. :)

The problem is how much of the SlackBuilds of the x86 distribution will have to be rewritten to get every package i586 compliant.

Now for the question... Are you going to do the work or is Patrick going to have to spend his time doing this and possibly delay the next release to update, check, test, etc. each newly rebuilt and updated package to the new architecture?

Do any of you guys realize the amount of work that will involve?

Plus will any of the packages get any reasonable benefit from switching to i586 other than a few compile-time optimizations?

glibc and xorg are i586 in -current now.

We've had discussions on the compile options before. You could also read up on i586 to understand the change.

My opinion is this change is not going the way you are thinking. My opinion is this change really is to reflect what various programs were doing already.

I'm talking the bulk of the whole tree Dugan. Everything would have to be converted to become fully i586 compliant. Personally, I don't see much of a benefit of trying to muck up everything just to satisfy a tiny niche and non-existent problem, other than trying to give Patrick more work. Besides Darth, you use your own homebrewed distribution anyways, so if you aren't using Slackware directly, why should anything be done to satisfy the whim of a user of a variant system anyways?

I would think the bigger issue then the CPU, would be the amount of memory that these old machines could have.
Heck, my father replaced his dual P2 300 old server a year or two ago, with a Raspberry PI. (faster cpu and more memory, as well as less electricity)

Most Pentium II systems do have at least AGP support which a few cards in Nouveau and ATI drivers still can use. I'm not certain, but do any Pentium Pro era motherboards have support for anything past PCI-33mhz?

Hi,
I'm running a Slot1 Pentium 3 PC as my main server for long long time.

And I have found that cups in 32bit -current tree does not work on the server.
This is because it uses SSE2 instruction in it, so this is not i586 compliant.

As I look into the "cups.SlackBuild" file, there are no line that specifies compiler option like
SLKCFLAGS="-O2 -march=i586 -mtune=i686" when built with ARCH="i?86".
Adding the CFLAGS=-march=i586 and rebuilt the cups package solved the issue.

This means gcc in -current generates instructions out of i586 as the default behavior.

I haven't checked yet how many other packages must be rebuilt with the SLKCFLAGS, but if we go to i586, gcc's default code generation behavior also needs to be considered.