Re: proposal [Forky i386] : linux-image-pentium4

ke 12.8.2026 klo 13.23 Martin-Éric Racine ([email protected]) kirjoitti:
>
> Greetings,
>
> One issue that keeps on bothering me since Trixie is that we ship i386
> without any kernel whatsoever. Yes, I agree, 32-bit architectures are
> largely deprecated, and most of us have moved on to 64-bit
> architectures, but shipping i386 as a demi-architecture simply doesn't
> make sense.
>
> For a long time, the key objection to keeping i386 supported was the
> plethora of non-PAE hardware that kept the port's baseline to
> something lacking modern CPU features. I fully agree.
>
> More recently, Go and Rust developers added "something SSE2 or newer"
> to their baseline. Bumping i386's baseline to Pentium 4 would fix
> this, since its CPU features are fairly close to x86-64 and were also
> ported to the Core Solo and Core Duo architectures that were fairly
> popular on laptops.
>
> For obvious reasons, upgrading i386 to Forky would still be
> discouraged, and no installer would be offered, but introducing a
> linux-image-pentium4  would at least allow some of the hardware to
> remain usable. Anyhow, bumping the baseline to pentium4 would
> decisively discard most, if not all, of the hardware that Debian
> considered a hindrance to keeping i386 supported, and it would come
> with some performance and security benefits.
>
> If Debian will not at least do this much, then let's please do
> everyone a favor and move i386 to debian-ports completely, instead of
> keeping the architecture in the current half-assed limbo.

PS: I of course meant linux-image-pentium-m, since pentium4 has too
large of a pipeline to support Core Solo and Core Duo laptops, but
retains most of the bells and whistles of pentium4.

Martin-Éric