[arch-general] [Fwd: [arch-announce] Dropping i686 support]

[Nicolas Bigaouette]

I did not liked the idea first, but now I see the benefit of it.

I think we should also drop some unsuportted packages that keep crufting the
repos since some time. I would suggest going back to Arch's root: BSD. Why
not an OpenBSD kernel? Linux is not developped actively enough...


;)

2009/3/31 David Rosenstrauch <darose at darose.net>

> Hmmm ...
>
> My only concern about this is that it's often difficult or impossible to
> run an x86_64 distro inside a VM.
>
> So one very definite negative of this change is that it'd restrict
> many/most people's ability to run Arch inside of a VM - something I've done
> many times, and have found very convenient, and which would be a shame to
> lose.
>
> Just my $0.02.
>
> DR
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [arch-announce] Dropping i686 support
> Date: Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:03:08 -0000
> From: Recent News Updates <announce at archlinux.org>
> Reply-To: Arch Linux Announcements <arch-announce at archlinux.org>
> To: arch-announce at archlinux.org
>
> Recently the developers have been discussing the possibility of adding some
> additional optimizations to our i686 port to improve multimedia support.
> This would involve reducing the compatibility with older systems. As some of
> you may 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 current generation hardware. The x86_64
> architecture has been available since 2002 (compared to i686 which is from
> 1995), and we believe most of our i686 users have x86_64 compatible
> hardware. An official time-line for the deprecation of the i686 port has not
> been established, but an official announcement needs to be made, as the
> decision has already been leaked to the ArchLinux-BR community. However, it
> is likely that major updates (GNOME, KDE, Xor
>  g, etc) will 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 specific patches are for x86_64, this should be relatively pain
> free. [1] <a href="
> http://groups.google.com/group/archlinux-br/browse_thread/thread/d1b6075adf9eba2d
> ">
> http://groups.google.com/group/archlinux-br/browse_thread/thread/d1b6075adf9eba2d</a>
> [2] <a href="
> http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fgroup%2Farchlinux-br%2Fbrowse_thread%2Fthread%2Fd1b6075adf9eba2d&sl=pt&tl=en&history_state0=
> ">
> http://translate.google.com/translate?prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fgroups.google.com%2Fgroup%2Farchlinux-br%2Fbrowse_thread%2Fthread%2Fd1b6075adf9eba2d&sl=pt&tl=en&history_state0=
> </a>
>
> URL: http://www.archlinux.org/news/440/
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