Intrepid compatibility with C3 CPUs

[Sam Tygier]

Hi

The current intrepid test releases will not boot on machines with Via C3 
CPUs. At boot the message:

"This kernel requires the following features not present on the CPU: cmov
Unable to boot - please use a kernel appropriate for your CPU."

is given.

It appears that the kernel now requires the 'cmov' instruction. If i 
understand right this is a i686 instruction. Has it been officially 
decided to drop support for older CPUs? I guess there would be benefits 
for optimising for newer CPUs, but I have not seen anything announced.

This has been reported as bug 
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/254453 , but I 
think it warrants community discussion. Maybe it is time to split i386 
and i686 into separate ubuntu versions. Maybe it is time for us folk 
with old CPUs to move to a more specialized distro. What should be 
considered obsolete (mini itx boards with C3s are still for sale 
http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=2 so if Via have stopped building them 
it can't have been long ago).

Sam Tygier