Linus Torvalds wants to drop i486 support from the Linux kernel citing its age
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I guess that it also has to do with modern Linux being so resource intensive that running it on an i486 processor shows a face that Linus doesn't want to show. Make sure that your OS can run only on hardware where you can say: Look at that performance! Reminds me of my student days: That huge Univac 1100/21 mainframe under EXEC8 could run interactive terminals at 1200 bps, but to say that it was designed for it would be a blatant lie. But it was The Great Workhorse of the university. For the 'Programming 101' course, we got three 16-bit minicomputers, each handling 20 interactive terminals at 9600 bps. The mainframe guys demanded that the line speed of the minicomputers be reduced to 1200 bps so that The Great Mainframe would not be standing in an unfortunately light next to those tiny (and unworthy?) mini-machine terminals. (As TAs in that 'Programming 101' course, we had sufficient control over the min-machines to keep the line speed at 9600 during normal working hours, but prepared to quickly reduce it to 1200 if one of those mainframe guys came over to check.)
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33 year old processors.
I’ve given up trying to be calm. However, I am open to feeling slightly less agitated.
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I would have thought that the i486-specific parts of the kernel are stable, and haven't been changed in years. As long as Linux supports 32-bit CPUs of one variety or another; the only overhead would be regression testing. I am certain that is automated, so why remove the support?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.
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Kent Sharkey wrote:
...that old machine you have under the desk
How did you know I had a 486 lying around?! I think I still have an old 386 laptop with a monochrome screen loaded with Linux 0.99 in the closet, and a Pentium 90MHz (or was that GHz?) desktop, too.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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Did anyone notice they called him 'Linux Torvalds'?
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Did anyone notice they called him 'Linux Torvalds'?
I didn't, but it might be because my brain does that all the time anyway. ;P
TTFN - Kent
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I would have thought that the i486-specific parts of the kernel are stable, and haven't been changed in years. As long as Linux supports 32-bit CPUs of one variety or another; the only overhead would be regression testing. I am certain that is automated, so why remove the support?
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows. -- 6079 Smith W.