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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/attachments/20150607/a1034d4b/attachment-0008.html>