Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 5 Now Uses i686 Kernel Over i586, SPARC64 Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Debian Installer Stretch Alpha 5 Now Uses i686 Kernel Over i586, SPARC64 Support

The fifth alpha release of the Debian Installer being prepared for the 9.0 "Stretch" release is now available...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Debian-Stretch-Installer-A5

[computerquip]

... Isn't i686 like 20 years old? Why is it just now becoming a default?

[reub2000]

... Isn't i686 like 20 years old? Why is it just now becoming a default?

Because optimizing for newer processors doesn't speed things up all that much.

[GreatEmerald]

Yea, that's a bit weird. Many other distros have simply dropped the i386 line entirely.

[edmon]

Yea, that's a bit weird. Many other distros have simply dropped the i386 line entirely.

because i386=i586=i686=i787=i868 no difference in execution after compile, but once compiled for higher than i386, binary may work bad with lower

[BSDude]

Yea, that's a bit weird. Many other distros have simply dropped the i386 line entirely.

The Linux kernel doesn't support i386 since 3.8, let's begin with that.

[GreatEmerald]

I did say "line", not that particular architecture. I mean that distros nowadays just support AMD64.

[whitecat]

Debian already dropped i386 support in Sarge 3.1.
And i486 was dropped in Squeeze 6.0.
Source
The current thread is about dropping the current i586 support to i686 only.

I recommend you to read the original thread which is really interesting. You can learn that:
"The only such processors apparently still available for sale are the DM&P Vortex86 family, Intel Quark and Xeon Phi".
But the Intel Quark is not supported due to hardware errata.
And the Xeon Phi is actually capable of 64-bit.
So the only loss is the Vortex86 CPU.

[devius]

Damn.... how am I going to install the latest Debian on my Pentium 60MHz PC now?



PS: Just kidding, I don't have a Pentium 60Mhz. The slowest one I have is a 75MHz.

[computerquip]

Because optimizing for newer processors doesn't speed things up all that much.

Actually, it can and does. Arch Linux was one of the first to have a i686-only binary repository and even then, i686 was supported by pretty much every processor available. I remember benchmarks in simple use cases that showed slight increase in everything... although compiler technology has certain improved since then and it depends entirely on the compiler.

because i386=i586=i686=i787=i868 no difference in execution after compile, but once compiled for higher than i386, binary may work bad with lower

There is no i787 or i868. It's been i686 processors since 1995 and AMD64 was the successor (along with Intels x86_64 extentions). You literally cannot purchase a processor today that doesn't support i686 (unless you switch architectures entirely, like to ARM or something), and you haven't been able to do so for at least a decade.