[Mageia-dev] i686 must be Pentium II ?

[Giuseppe Ghibò]

2010/9/25 Filipe Rosset <rosset.filipe at gmail.com>

> On 09/25/2010 09:16 AM, R James wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 4:59 AM, Patrice BRUNELLE
>> <patrice.brunelle at free.fr>  wrote:
>>
>>> Le vendredi 24 septembre 2010 à 15:51 -0500, R James a écrit :
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Technically, the i686 started with the Pentium Pro.  (Remember that?
>>>>  :o)
>>>>
>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P6_(microarchitecture)<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P6_%28microarchitecture%29>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Yes I remember that. And ?
>>>
>>>  Its just a precision to the subject title.  i686 began with the
>> Pentium Pro, not Pentium II.
>>
>> I'm not sure what performance benefits can be gained from compiling
>> for i686 vs i586.  Probably not much except for multimedia
>> applications which most of those can auto-detect the CPU's
>> capabilities anyways.
>>
>>
> Just for reference, the Fedora Project was changed from i586 to i686:
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_12_Mass_Rebuild#Driving_Features
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/F12X86Support
> http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-devel-list@redhat.com/msg02583.html
> http://www.mail-archive.com/fedora-devel-list@redhat.com/msg02889.html(with 'benchmarks')
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/FWN/Issue162#Fedora_11_Will_Support_i586_Instruction_Set
>
>
>  There are still people running AMD K6's (ie: me) which is also i586.
>> If we compile for i686 and newer, they won't even be able to boot the
>> installer.
>>
>> Therefore, I agree with the decision to keep i586 support.
>>
>
> I agree too.
>
>
IMHO the problem is not finding an architecture to fit the i586 or i686 rpm
flags, rather to find the minimum CPU and memory requirement worthwhile for
a decent usage. With KDE if we look at the Mandriva 2010.1, it's barely
usable on a P4-3000 with 1-2GB RAM, or a AMD Barton 2500. Barely means that
windows and applications are pretty slow to open, switching is slow, etc.;
since netbook are so popular we can consider the minimum requirements as
those of a typical 2010 netbook, which has ATOM 1.6Ghz processor and 1GB
memory. In other words we can consider as default the presence of the SSE
instruction set. ATOM has even the SSE2, which would be even better, but
that would left out some AMD CPU (some older AMD, like 1.2Ghz has only the
3DNow and not SSE). I would drop compiling for old ISA drivers in kernel
(think to some old ISA 3com card, like 3C505, etc.).

G.
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