[Mageia-dev] i686 must be Pentium II ?

Tux99 tux99-mga at uridium.org
Sat Sep 25 19:52:47 CEST 2010


On Sat, 25 Sep 2010, Giuseppe Ghibò wrote:

> 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.).
> 

You are not seeing the bigger picture. Mageia is not just for desktop or 
netbook users or modern powerful servers, there are people using 
embedded systems that often still have i586 compatible cpus, ISA cards 
are still very common in industrial uses, etc.

Personally I have a VIA C3 based system that I use as home server, and 
the C3 is only i586 compatible, not i686.

Also dropping kernel modules for old hardware does not bring any 
advantage (they are modules anyway so they don't get loaded on systems 
where they aren't needed), only disadvantages to those people who need 
them.

So please let's try to be as comprehensive as possible, not exclude 
potential users by creating needless limits and restrictions.



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