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Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

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Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#51

Post by lozaning »

cptskippy wrote: post #16
jdsully wrote: post #5

I remember being an early adopter of 64-bit Linux with my Athlon64 back in the day. Lots of stuff was broken and I got a lot of debate on whether it was any faster or worthwhile at all. It's really cool to see the technology curve go full circle.

Completely off topic but... Althlon64 was a swift kick in the nuts for Intel, but AMD really didn't followup until Ryzen. I wonder if they're going to stick around and fight this time.

I've still got my AMD Athlon 64 3200+ in a bin somewhere. I remember being in sheer awe that i could just drop in a dual core cpu into my nforce4 based mobo. It felt revolutionary at the time.

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#52

Post by lazyguy2 »

jdsully wrote: post #5

I remember being an early adopter of 64-bit Linux with my Athlon64 back in the day. Lots of stuff was broken and I got a lot of debate on whether it was any faster or worthwhile at all. It's really cool to see the technology curve go full circle.

For several years I ran a 64bit kernel with 32bit userland.

That way I was compatible with games and most other things without having to deal with increased memory usage and compatibility hacks.

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#53

Post by yingw787 »

geofft wrote: post #20

Relatedly, Ubuntu no longer builds for i386 as a complete architecture: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2019... They are still building i386 packages for use on 64-bit kernels, for the sake of precompiled 32-bit software (games etc). That's scenario B from Simon McVittie's reply in this thread, and it sounds like that's not affected.

I was able to upgrade from Lubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 for my 32bit IBM Thinkpad T42 using do_release_upgrade. It’s not downloadable on the website, but I think for 18.04 the build is still there.

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#54

Post by [deleted] »

lazyguy2 wrote: post #52
jdsully wrote: post #5

I remember being an early adopter of 64-bit Linux with my Athlon64 back in the day. Lots of stuff was broken and I got a lot of debate on whether it was any faster or worthwhile at all. It's really cool to see the technology curve go full circle.

For several years I ran a 64bit kernel with 32bit userland. That way I was compatible with games and most other things without having to deal with increased memory usage and compatibility hacks.

[deleted]

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#55

Post by mehrdadn »

derefr wrote: post #39
srgpqt wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1GB is still a lot of memory. If anything, we've only learned to squander all available memory.

Go ahead and buffer 4k video streams to disk, I dare you :) There's a reason that even modern appliance platforms like Apple/Android TV need multiple GBs of memory, and it ain't bloat.

What are you calling "disk" here? It's not every day that I see a machine with a disk slower than its network connection.

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#56

Post by koolba »

lazyguy2 wrote: post #52
jdsully wrote: post #5

I remember being an early adopter of 64-bit Linux with my Athlon64 back in the day. Lots of stuff was broken and I got a lot of debate on whether it was any faster or worthwhile at all. It's really cool to see the technology curve go full circle.

For several years I ran a 64bit kernel with 32bit userland. That way I was compatible with games and most other things without having to deal with increased memory usage and compatibility hacks.

There’s an even better target, x32, but sadly it never got much traction and is deprecated: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI

The idea is to expose the 64-bit instruction set and registers, but keep memory and pointers per-process 32-bit as most apps use less than 4 GB of memory.

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#57

Post by Ellipsis753 »

nickysielicki wrote: post #48
jdsully wrote: post #5

I remember being an early adopter of 64-bit Linux with my Athlon64 back in the day. Lots of stuff was broken and I got a lot of debate on whether it was any faster or worthwhile at all. It's really cool to see the technology curve go full circle.

My dad bought me an Anthlon64 machine for Christmas and we put it together. Not know much about anything, I remember being pissed off/confused that I didn’t have Windows XP 64-bit in spite of having that Anthlon64 sticker on the front. A few years later my brother was starting a web server to host a forum for the Digital TV switch-over focused on the Madison, WI market, shout-out and RIP madcityhd.com Watching him se…

Wobbly windows were the main reason I switched to Linux. Been using it for everything ever since... Kind of amazing that could be a "killer app".

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#58

Post by gizmo686 »

yingw787 wrote: post #53
geofft wrote: post #20

Relatedly, Ubuntu no longer builds for i386 as a complete architecture: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2019... They are still building i386 packages for use on 64-bit kernels, for the sake of precompiled 32-bit software (games etc). That's scenario B from Simon McVittie's reply in this thread, and it sounds like that's not affected.

I was able to upgrade from Lubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 for my 32bit IBM Thinkpad T42 using do_release_upgrade. It’s not downloadable on the website, but I think for 18.04 the build is still there.

You can download Ubuntu going back to 4.10 here: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#59

Post by noobermin »

jdsully wrote: post #5

I remember being an early adopter of 64-bit Linux with my Athlon64 back in the day. Lots of stuff was broken and I got a lot of debate on whether it was any faster or worthwhile at all. It's really cool to see the technology curve go full circle.

Let's just hope we don't go through the same thing when we switch to 128-bit. We ought to learn from our mistakes when we do this whole thing again.

And yes, before people flare me for this, don't pretend it isn't possible, recall that once upon a time 640K ought to be enough for anybody.

Re: Lots of bugs in 32-bit x86 Linux entry code

#60

Post by geofft »

yingw787 wrote: post #53
geofft wrote: post #20

Relatedly, Ubuntu no longer builds for i386 as a complete architecture: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2019... They are still building i386 packages for use on 64-bit kernels, for the sake of precompiled 32-bit software (games etc). That's scenario B from Simon McVittie's reply in this thread, and it sounds like that's not affected.

I was able to upgrade from Lubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 for my 32bit IBM Thinkpad T42 using do_release_upgrade. It’s not downloadable on the website, but I think for 18.04 the build is still there.

I think they've stopped building them in 19.10. 18.04 is an LTS supported for 5 years, so users of i386-only CPUs are fine until 2023.
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