Linux Nukes 386 Support 464
sfcrazy writes with news that Linus pulled a patch by Ingo Molnar to remove support for the 386 from the kernel. From Ingo's commit log: "Unfortunately there's a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won't be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff."
Linus adds: "I'm not sentimental. Good riddance."
What was the last version which actually did? (Score:4, Insightful)
And the Linux Community responds (Score:0, Insightful)
And the Linux Community responds with a resounding... "meh".
Re:What was the last version which actually did? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Dammit (Score:5, Insightful)
If you HAVE a 386, don't you also REALLY want a pre-2.0 kernel, anyway? :-)
Re:On noes! The satellites! (Score:5, Insightful)
Especially if they have been having to make things overly complex trying to retain backwards compatibility.
Now, see... if he'd just gone and written a microkernel in ther first place, we could support multiple processor architectures with a single codetree anyway....
Re:Rad-hardened processors? (Score:5, Insightful)
There are. But how many of them desperately need to run a 3.7 kernel?
Anyone in the world affected at all? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm trying to figure out if any user, worldwide, would be affected by this.
As pointed out in another comment, there aren't very many applications that will work. If anyone, worldwide, is using it as a desktop OS, they probably are on an older kernel anyway.
As for embedded systems : since new 386 CPUs have not been produced in 5 years, there's not anyone who would be designing a new embedded system that will use a recent kernel. There's old systems deployed in the field - but why would anyone try to upgrade an old embedded system to a new OS and kernel? A good embedded system is supposed to be reliable and simple enough it needs only minor bug fixes throughout it's deployed lifespan.
Re:Bearded UNIX admin: (Score:2, Insightful)
Whatever embedded device you run from 1991, it's highly unlikey that you need to run a 2012 linux on it.
ought to change the kernel version number to 4 (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a big enough change to warrant version 4.0. Otherwise, we might reach kernel version 3.8.6 which won't work on a 386.
What I don't understand is what change between the 386 and 486 makes dropping the 386 a good idea. What functionality has the 486 got that the 386 doesn't have?
Re:Dammit (Score:4, Insightful)
I have seen a modern embedded x86-compatible CPU platform with 256MB of RAM. The CPU was not by Via, but it was an x86 compatible one that implemented only the 486 instruction set.
Great fun to be had as most of the Linux stuff we had was compiled for i586 and higher. It just crashes.
Re:Dammit (Score:5, Insightful)
Before 1990, I was using a 386 with 4MB of ram. In 1991, my parents purchased a 486sx 25mhz with 16MB of ram for $1500. The hard drive was 170mb. If you had a gig of ram, why even need a hard drive? You must have just created ramdisks and had a blazing fast computer.
By 1997, I had colocated my first server on a pentium dual xeon 450mhz with 512mb of ram. This system cost upwards of $2k to build at the time.
I'm almost sure 386 had NO support for dimms. So you used simms? Were they 30 or 72 pin?
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMM [wikipedia.org], 72pin simms did not replace 30pin simms until the mid 90's and were NOT present in 386's. 30pin simm sizes ranged from 256kb to 16mb while 72pin simm sizes ranged from 1mb to 128mb.
Before spamming us with your nostalgia, at least try to get your facts within a magnitude of the truth.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)