[CentOS-devel] CentOS 7 (1503) i686 Beta Architecture

[Manuel Wolfshant]

On 06/06/2015 10:34 PM, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 6, 2015 10:06, "Lamar Owen" <lowen at pari.edu 
> <mailto:lowen at pari.edu>> wrote:
> >
> > On 06/06/2015 03:38 AM, Toni Spets wrote:
> >>
> >> If you think it this way, why bother with the i686 build at all? 
> Your dual core 2010 vintage Intel Atom D510 can run 64-bit CentOS 7 
> anyway. This is why dropping SSE2 requirement would be benefitical as 
> it would allow running it with a larger amount of x86 CPUs that can't 
> run the 64-bit variation at all.
> >>
> >
> > Older Xeon systems that are non-64bit capable are one set of 
> possible targets.  If PAE is disabled, Pentium M is likewise a good 
> target (we're running Windows 7 Pro here on some Dell Latitude D610's 
> with reasonable performance; CentOS would run on these quite well, as 
> they are single-core 2GHz Pentium M with 2GB of RAM and somewhat 
> reasonable ATI X300 video, if PAE isn't required).  Of course, 
> NetBurst Xeon is a performance pig, but a non-profit that has an older 
> but high-quality server with NetBurst Xeon in it might not have the 
> discretionary funds to obtain a similar quality system with a more 
> modern and power-efficient CPU; they'll run it until it breaks and 
> it's no longer discretionary to replace it.
> >
> > Pentium M on the other hand performs very well at 2GHz.  We have a 
> number of D600's, but they are just not quite up to the task of 
> running Win7 reasonably well.  That era, 2004 or so, seems to be the 
> break-point for boxes that are still very usable running modern 
> workloads.  D600's still make excellent service laptops for things 
> requiring serial ports (like our datum SSU-2000 timeserver with a 
> PRS45A cesium primary refclock).  I have a couple of D600's parked at 
> a co-lo just for that sort of troubleshooting purpose where RS-232 is 
> still needed, and another D600 running the software for our Advin 
> Pilot EPROM programmer, which needs a parallel port connection (I did 
> mention specialty hardware before.....).
> >
> >
>
> The part not addressed in this is getting the 2 main windowing systems 
> to work well in such 'constrained' environments as neither KDE or 
> gnome think such hardware worth dealing with issues on (if it works 
> great if it doesn't tough from previous experience trying to get 
> help). So you are ending up having to customize more and .more to the 
> point it isn't really centos anymore.
>

Lighter desktop environments with far fewer resource requirements exist 
and are heavily used. And if xfce/lxde or others exist for the ARM 
platform, I am 100% sure those are ( or will be ) available for i686 as 
well. I even have friends with PCs assembled from components 
manufactured in 2014 with SSD and 2 digits worth of RAM ( expressed in 
GB ) who use xfce ! That the DE will not come from base CentOS ... OK. 
It won't. So what? A lot of the people who use LAMP stacks based on 
CentOS replace the core php ( and lately even mysql ) and we do not ban 
them :)  Do we offer support for something we do not ship ? No, we 
don't. But that's not a reason to not allow it to be done by others. Let 
us be the foundation !

However, if you want to say that all the i686 stack will need to be 
[re]generated using the recompiled compiler... yes, I am with you on 
this one. It will probably be the case and to be honest I am not sure 
it's worth it. But that would be the exact use case for a "i386" 
parallel set of packages, as once existed in parallel with i686 ( and 
athlon!).

For WITW ( and almost unrelated to the matter at hand ), my general 
manager who is a US citizen but also a freak defined by "I want a very 
very very light laptop" ( 12 years ago the guy used to travel WITHOUT 
the battery on his Compaq laptop... ) tasked me 4 days ago to look for a 
11.6" (!!) laptop similar to his Sharp MM10 which just died. And NOT a 
chromebook but something able to run Outlook!

Bottom line, let's not dismiss old hardware just because it's more 
convenient. If there is a use case and there are people willing to 
enroll at the task of maintaining it , I'd say "go for it". But once 
again, as a parallel set of packages, not by replacing what already was 
built and is shipped for the i686 arch.



         wolfy, proud owner of a VIA C3 based fully functional computer
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