Should puppy keep i386 support ?

What features/apps/bugfixes needed in a future Puppy
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Master_wrong
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Should puppy keep i386 support ?

#1 Post by Master_wrong »

http://www.engadget.com/2012/12/15/linu ... -8-kernel/

it's in the news, btw i wonder if it is better for puppy to keep the support (maybe by patching kernel) or drop it too ?

thanks
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Iguleder
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#2 Post by Iguleder »

Drop it!

Nobody runs Puppy on true i386.
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starhawk
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#3 Post by starhawk »

You couldn't run Puppy on that proc even if you wanted to. There just aren't enough horses inside ;)

FWIW, I have a Pentium II based laptop (a Latitude CPi D300XT typically referred to as "The Infernal Dell" -- as well as with other words that I'm far too polite to repeat ;) ). I can BARELY run TurboPup or Puplite5 on it. I've basically given up, although sometime soon I should probably drag it back out and try a pUPnGO2012 variant on it. That's basically the only thing that will run with anything resembling speed -- everything else walks or crawls, and it's painful.

That Pentium II runs at 300MHz. An i386 CPU tops out at 40MHz -- meaning that the Pentium II is roughly seven and a half times faster! Not to mention that the i386 doesn't support certain instruction sets that the Pentium II does -- meaning that they're partially incompatible.

One more thing. While the kernel may be compatible with an i386 CPU, the everything else basically isn't. Puppy is usually compiled with i686 packages, which will run on a Pentium II or newer. They will NOT run on a Pentium I or any of its 586-class variants (AMD K6, K6-2, K6-3D; Cyrix 5x86; and the rare but notable Vortex86 line) or, for that matter, anything older. There are a couple versions of Puppy (one particular variant of pUPnGO comes to mind, as does ClassicPup) that are compiled with i486 packages, but none are compiled with i386 packages to my knowledge -- meaning that the system still will not boot on a 386 system.

BTW, Linus Torvalds had a 386 system when he was making history ;) rather amazing how far we've moved on from that, isn't it?

EDIT: BTW, Iguleder -- your Guy Dog puplet will boot on The Infernal Dell -- takes about 10min for a desktop to show up, though! (I actually did that, once. I'd rather not do it again...)

Dewbie

#4 Post by Dewbie »

starhawk wrote:
Puppy is usually compiled with i686 packages, which will run on a Pentium II or newer. They will NOT run on a Pentium I or any of its 586-class variants (AMD K6, K6-2, K6-3D; Cyrix 5x86; and the rare but notable Vortex86 line) or, for that matter, anything older.
Have a look at this thread.

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Q5sys
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#5 Post by Q5sys »

Iguleder wrote:Drop it!

Nobody runs Puppy on true i386.
+1
Im actually surprised Linus decided to keep 486 when he dropped 386 from the kernel.

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#6 Post by Master_wrong »

Q5sys wrote:
Iguleder wrote:Drop it!

Nobody runs Puppy on true i386.
+1
Im actually surprised Linus decided to keep 486 when he dropped 386 from the kernel.
That's interesting...
anyway how many Kb/MB of data are we saving when we cut those from the kernel anyway ?

i mean what if, puppy was designed for special machine (i686-puppy, i586-puppy, etc) will that makes puppy smaller in size ?
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Q5sys
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#7 Post by Q5sys »

Master_wrong wrote:
Q5sys wrote:
Iguleder wrote:Drop it!

Nobody runs Puppy on true i386.
+1
Im actually surprised Linus decided to keep 486 when he dropped 386 from the kernel.
That's interesting...
anyway how many Kb/MB of data are we saving when we cut those from the kernel anyway ?

i mean what if, puppy was designed for special machine (i686-puppy, i586-puppy, etc) will that makes puppy smaller in size ?
Its not necessarly about making the kernel smaller... its about removing unneeded code, that there was no point to having around. Especially since it created more work since it had to be taken into account.
And that IS in line with the Puppy Philosophy. Have what you need, no need for extras that are useless.
In this case the 386 code was pretty much pointless.

Linus' words:
Linus wrote:Merge branch 'x86-nuke386-for-linus' of git://git./linux/kernel/git/tip/tip

Pull "Nuke 386-DX/SX support" from Ingo Molnar:
"This tree removes ancient-386-CPUs support and thus zaps quite a bit
of complexity:

24 files changed, 56 insertions(+), 425 deletions(-)

... which complexity has plagued us with extra work whenever we wanted
to change SMP primitives, for years.

Unfortunately there's a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33
system from early 1991 won't be able to boot modern Linux kernels
anymore. Sniff."

I'm not sentimental. Good riddance.

* 'x86-nuke386-for-linus' of git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/tip/tip:
x86, 386 removal: Document Nx586 as a 386 and thus unsupported
x86, cleanups: Simplify sync_core() in the case of no CPUID
x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_X86_POPAD_OK
x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_X86_WP_WORKS_OK
x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_INVLPG
x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_BSWAP
x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_XADD
x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_CMPXCHG
x86, 386 removal: Remove CONFIG_M386 from Kconfig

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Karl Godt
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#8 Post by Karl Godt »

Puppy glibc is compliled for i486 and medium-old Puppy-kernels also.

I run kernels i386, i486, i586, i686, iAtom, iCore2 on my Core2-Duo box. Never been aware of differences. Maybe not the cause, but the typical Puppy kernel by BK is a lowrider with almost not much load. Kernels with more features and probably a higher arch run with much more loadaverage in my experience.

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8-bit
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#9 Post by 8-bit »

As long as older versions of Puppy are still available for old PCs I see no reason to keep i386 support in current and future releases of Puppy Linux.
One with older hardware should use a version of Puppy that was made when the older hardware was current.

A person with older hardware should not expect current versions of Puppy to have the support their hardware needs.

I for instance, have an older Compaq laptop with 192 megs of ram.
I tried Slacko 5.3 on it and besides being slow, it showed other problems of icons disappearing on the desktop, lockups, and corrupted pupsave files.
I then installed Puppy 4.3.1 on it and was a happy camper with everything working as it should.

My main point here is that older versions of Puppy should not be dropped from the repositories as being too old.

Dewbie

#10 Post by Dewbie »

8-bit wrote:
A person with older hardware should not expect current versions of Puppy to have the support their hardware needs.
It depends on what you mean by "current."
After all, BarryK still does Wary...and ttuuxxx still does 2.14x.
My main point here is that older versions of Puppy should not be dropped from the repositories as being too old.
...especially when you have goodies like this and this to keep 'em going. :)

gcmartin

#11 Post by gcmartin »

How many of us are aware that within 2-3 years many/most will not be using the power-hungry processors some keep around. (I've just noticed the difference in wattage use of Ivy Bridge vs Sandy Bridge...WoW)

I was in 2nd hand store yesterday and saw a working 2006 P4 with 1GB RAM for $35 with monitor. (I got it for a senior neighbor; she wanted to get started on the Internet and was tired of going to the local Library. My wireless signal extends to her house. Birthday gift to her.).

Some of Puppyland distro builders are sharing what PC hardware they intend for the distros they build. This is a good indicator coming from those builders of safe platforms that they expect will not have problems running the code. This has been and is a good idea from those that provide that kind of useful understanding on the front-end when they deliver their solutions to us. Hope it continues.

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Q5sys
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#12 Post by Q5sys »

gcmartin wrote:How many of us are aware that within 2-3 years many/most will not be using the power-hungry processors some keep around. (I've just noticed the difference in wattage use of Ivy Bridge vs Sandy Bridge...WoW)

I was in 2nd hand store yesterday and saw a working 2006 P4 with 1GB RAM for $35 with monitor. (I got it for a senior neighbor; she wanted to get started on the Internet and was tired of going to the local Library. My wireless signal extends to her house. Birthday gift to her.).
Thats a funny bit of irony... since the massive numbers of P4 (Prescots and Gallatin) and then the P4-D chips that were the most power hungry chip intel put out till the limited run of Core 2 extreme Yorkfield, and the the most recent incarnations of the i7 (900 series). No reason to even bother talking about the Itanium 2 MX2, since its in class of its own. lol

Im wondering if Ivy Bridge will be brought over to the desktops though...

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