21–30 of 201 posts
Incidentally, wouldn't the exclusive use of 64-bit pointers (and size_t) prompted by the inflated need in large address spaces lead to an ever more increasing demand for memory (due to in-memory objects being now bigger in size)?
It is one of the reasons that makes me love Arch: developers are pragmatic. They were always in the early birds for taking decision about the future, like switching to Python3 as default interpreter system-wide, embracing the change to systemd, and now this. The rolling release aspect imposes to stay as close as possible to upstream versions because upstream does not wait on Arch to update their dependencies to newer…
> Side effect will be that people will be encouraged to get a modern computer if not already. All those netbooks (atom processors; 1 GB or 2 GB ram; 32 GB hard drive) would be great with Linux (once the drivers get fixed) and really benefit from 32 bit because of the ram limitations. Now? They'll end up in landfill.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The switch to the 'python' command running python 3, as a non-arch user, put me off Arch forever. It just broke everything, which had long assumed 'python' would run python 2. Not installing python 2, and just python 3, with the name python3, would have been fine. Arch put us in a situation where it was basically impossible to run python 2 with a #! line, as some distros hadn't yet introduced a 'python2' symlink yet.
In fairness, this was back when we all thought Py3 would take over Py2 "any day now"™
Also, I wonder what this means for the Intel Quark SoC (found in Intel Edison and Intel Galileo boards). Does this mean Arch Linux wont be an option for these devices?
Despite RHEL 7/CentOS 7 not supporting 32-bit x86, there is now a community-led effort to port it to 32-bit x86. I wonder if Arch would consider doing the same (supporting 32-bit x86 as an alternative architecture).
It is one of the reasons that makes me love Arch: developers are pragmatic. They were always in the early birds for taking decision about the future, like switching to Python3 as default interpreter system-wide, embracing the change to systemd, and now this. The rolling release aspect imposes to stay as close as possible to upstream versions because upstream does not wait on Arch to update their dependencies to newer…
> Side effect will be that people will be encouraged to get a modern computer if not already. All those netbooks (atom processors; 1 GB or 2 GB ram; 32 GB hard drive) would be great with Linux (once the drivers get fixed) and really benefit from 32 bit because of the ram limitations. Now? They'll end up in landfill.
It is one of the reasons that makes me love Arch: developers are pragmatic. They were always in the early birds for taking decision about the future, like switching to Python3 as default interpreter system-wide, embracing the change to systemd, and now this. The rolling release aspect imposes to stay as close as possible to upstream versions because upstream does not wait on Arch to update their dependencies to newer…
Or switch to a less pragmatic distribution.
Other tech folk have always talked about 32 bit support as a necessary evil since smaller types mean less memory. The complexity of managing a secondary 32 bit environment has been worse than the memory usage of 64 bit apps for a very, very long time.
If people want 32 bit pointers on 64 bit hardware they should pick the x32 ABI instead
It is one of the reasons that makes me love Arch: developers are pragmatic. They were always in the early birds for taking decision about the future, like switching to Python3 as default interpreter system-wide, embracing the change to systemd, and now this. The rolling release aspect imposes to stay as close as possible to upstream versions because upstream does not wait on Arch to update their dependencies to newer…
The switch to the 'python' command running python 3, as a non-arch user, put me off Arch forever. It just broke everything, which had long assumed 'python' would run python 2. Not installing python 2, and just python 3, with the name python3, would have been fine. Arch put us in a situation where it was basically impossible to run python 2 with a #! line, as some distros hadn't yet introduced a 'python2' symlink yet.
It is a shame that many major Linux distributions are dropping 32-bit x86 support. I used to be able to say with confidence that the old laptop or PC in your garage can run any major Linux distribution, breathing new life into aging hardware. For example, I have an old ThinkPad T42, which I use to test out new Linux distros, which incidentally, is currently running Arch. Using older hardware increases the chances tha…
Yes: https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-ports/2017-Januar...
(Also https://lists.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-ports/2017-Januar...)