Date: Sun, 15 Dec 2002 10:05:52 +0100 From: Erik Trulsson <ertr1013@student.uu.se> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: Re: 80386 out of GENERIC Message-ID: <20021215090551.GA10215@falcon.midgard.homeip.net> In-Reply-To: <001901c2a3f9$627c1b40$0200000a@sewer.org> References: <635948263.20021214220720@dds.nl> <24244.1039900460@critter.freebsd.dk> <20021214.173219.116676673.imp@bsdimp.com> <3DFC0B29.FD6F7F18@mindspring.com> <001901c2a3f9$627c1b40$0200000a@sewer.org>
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On Sun, Dec 15, 2002 at 12:18:21AM -0500, Craig Reyenga wrote: > Sorry for butting in, but my $.02 is that 386's are old enough that > FreeBSD, or any other OS for that matter, shouldn't wait up for them. Why not? An OS in itself should not require a lot of CPU power. > They've gotten to the point where they are basically useless except > for running older software, which was likely written for them anyways. They are not useless, and if new software has problems running on them it is mostly because a lot of new software is big and bloated without any good reason except for lazy/incompetent programmers. > If I had a 386 that I wanted FreeBSD on, I'd crack open the old FreeBSD 3.5 > install CD's, assuming it even had a cdrom drive. > > I understand why people care about supporting older hardware. Reasons > such as cost, and the ability to allow code bloat to _really_ manifest > itself > come to mind. However, a 386 is just too old for words and should > be running older software with less features. Less features and more security problems. Considering that security fixes normally don't get applied to the 3.x branch any longer one might want to be a bit careful running that on a computer connected to the Net. Eventually I assume that 4. will be similarily abandoned which means that you will have to run 5.x to have a secure system. Personally I strongly disagree with the notion that hardware that is a mere 10 years old (like some '386s) should be considered "too old for words". The only remotely good reason I have heard for removing support for 386 in the default configuration is that having it in would pessimize performance too much for more modern CPUs. How valid that reason is I cannot judge, but I guess it is possible. (And just FYI, my 386 box is happily running 4.7-stable at the moment without any problems and I will probably consider updating it to 5.x when security fixes are no longer automatically applied to 4.x.) > > -Craig > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Terry Lambert" <tlambert2@mindspring.com> > To: "M. Warner Losh" <imp@bsdimp.com> > Cc: <phk@freebsd.org>; <akruijff@dds.nl>; <DavidJohnson@siemens.com>; > <current@freebsd.org> > Sent: Saturday, December 14, 2002 23:55 > Subject: Re: 80386 out of GENERIC > > "M. Warner Losh" wrote: > > > One problem with most 386 boxes is that they have very little memory. > > > sysinstall is a big, bloated pig dog these days that takes more RAM > > > than most 386 boxes have. This is true also for many 486 boxes too. > > > So even if 386 stuff were in the default kernel, you'd likely have > > > other issues in making sysinstall work and have to do custom > > > hacking... > > > > Add to this that Bosko's workaround for the CPU bug with PSE/PGE > > includes loading the kernel at 4M rather than 1M. -- <Insert your favourite quote here.> Erik Trulsson ertr1013@student.uu.se To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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