[rfc] improving 32bit user performance/experience...

[Dmitrijs Ledkovs]

2009/5/19 Alexandre Strube <surak at surak.eti.br>:
>> Even though I'm performance freak I will be staying on my 32bit
>> dual-core laptop for quite a while still.
>>
>> (I have access to Sparc 64bit grid ;-) to run my simulations on)
>
> Hello Dima,
> I guess the issue here was deprecating the -386 in favor of taking advantage
> of -586(and beyond) instructions, even in 32 bit, which would give 32-bit
> ubuntu a slight boost.
> However, there are people who opposes this, as there are CPUs that
> doesn't necessarily support those, besides of people who uses 386s... (Which
> is hard to understand why would someone use ubuntu on it).
> []
> Alexandre Strube
> surak at ubuntu.com
>

I wasn't that well informed. i've read up on the issue. Lets now
consider following

when:

On desktop should be gone by now, but formally Intel slashed
production of 386 in 2007 (according to wikipedia). Dapper is still
supported until 2011 and I see a lot of 386's still staying around as
slow, small "home" servers.

who:

The cange will negarivly affect old PC users, old PC server's and
embedded platforms. In addition did anyone confirm 586 instructions
are fine with Via & AMD (i hope they are fine on modern Intel chips)?

what:

Rebuild the whole archieve...... Did anyone try that with i586? I
would like to see a rebuild of the archive from scratch. I bet there
will be quite a few FTBS.

what else:

This change will probably result in a new architecture in the archive
because of Old PC's, Old servers and Embedded systems which are still
i386.

On the other hand we can be all hype and force Old PC's, Old servers
and Embeddeb systems to use Debian =DDDD


In conclusion I'm against the change until I see a full rebuild of the
archive and some *significant* real-life figures why whould I switch
from 386 to 586.

-- 
With best regards


Dmitrijs Ledkovs (for short Dima),
Ледков Дмитрий Юрьевич