From announce@archlinux.org Tue Mar 31 21:03:08 2009 From: Recent News Updates To: arch-announce@lists.archlinux.org Subject: [arch-announce] Dropping i686 support Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:03:08 +0000 Message-ID: <20090401010308.A9F6A2A25A@gerolde.archlinux.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============1878506610894620111==" --===============1878506610894620111== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Recently the developers have been discussing the possibility of adding some a= dditional optimizations to our i686 port to improve multimedia support. This = would involve reducing the compatibility with older systems. As some of you m= ay have heard ([1], Google translation [2]), this discussion has resulted in = the decision to focus exclusively on the x86_64 port. The overall opinion of = the developers is that the x86_64 port is now complete enough to justify this= decision and that this is in keeping with Arch's philosophy of supporting cu= rrent generation hardware. The x86_64 architecture has been available since 2= 002 (compared to i686 which is from 1995), and we believe most of our i686 us= ers have x86_64 compatible hardware. An official time-line for the deprecatio= n of the i686 port has not been established, but an official announcement nee= ds to be made, as the decision has already been leaked to the ArchLinux-BR co= mmunity. However, it is likely that major updates (GNOME, KDE, Xorg, etc) wil= l not be built for i686 in the immediate future. Users will still be able to = build packages for i686 packages using ABS. As most of the architecture speci= fic patches are for x86_64, this should be relatively pain free. [1] http://groups.google.com/group/archlinux-br/browse_thread/thread/d1= b6075adf9eba2d [2] http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=3D_t&hl=3Den&ie=3DUTF-8&u= =3Dhttp%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fgroup%2Farchlinux-br%2Fbrowse_thread%2Fth= read%2Fd1b6075adf9eba2d&sl=3Dpt&tl=3Den&history_state0=3D URL: http://www.archlinux.org/news/440/ --===============1878506610894620111==-- From fukawi2@gmail.com Tue Mar 31 21:16:59 2009 From: Phillip Smith To: arch-announce@lists.archlinux.org Subject: Re: [arch-announce] Dropping i686 support Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 12:16:57 +1100 Message-ID: <33be1b4c0903311816v506c6de4nc2c1b3e8fdc1e085@mail.gmail.com> In-Reply-To: <20090401010308.A9F6A2A25A@gerolde.archlinux.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="===============8325492398276635871==" --===============8325492398276635871== Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 2009/4/1 Recent News Updates > > this discussion has resulted in the decision to focus exclusively on the x8= 6_64 port. I LOL'ed :D --===============8325492398276635871==--