Archlinux News: Phasing out i686 support

[securitybreach]

Official announcement

 

Phasing out i686 support

 

2017-01-25 - Bartłomiej Piotrowski

 

Due to the decreasing popularity of i686 among the developers and the community, we have decided to phase out the support of this architecture. The decision means that February ISO will be the last that allows to install 32 bit Arch Linux. The next 9 months are deprecation period, during which i686 will be still receiving upgraded packages. Starting from November 2017, packaging and repository tools will no longer require that from maintainers, effectively making i686 unsupported.

 

However, as there is still some interest in keeping i686 alive, we would like to encourage the community to make it happen with our guidance. The arch-ports mailing list and #archlinux-ports IRC channel on Freenode will be used for further coordination.

 

The [multilib] repository will not be affected by this change.

 

https://www.archlinu...t-i686-support/

 

This has been in discussion for about 6 months on the mailing list.

[sunrat]

I read recently on MX forum that over a third of the MX-16 downloads are 32 bit. I guess Arch has more geeky users with more recent systems.

[securitybreach]

I read recently on MX forum that over a third of the MX-16 downloads are 32 bit. I guess Arch has more geeky users with more recent systems.

 

Well I have never really considered rolling distros to be a good fit for older computers anyway. Things change too quickly and a lot of times, older hardware drivers are removed to make room for new drivers.. among other reasons. You can't really expect to play with the latest and greatest with old hardware..

[abarbarian]

Well 64 bit cpu's have been around for more than a decade so it makes sense to drop 32 bit especially as there are plenty of distros that are still supporting 32 bit.

I would guess that the community will if there is a need keep a 32 bit version on the go. A lot of software has been updated to run efficiently on 64 bit however there are some very popular programs that have not made the change yet.

 

 

64-bit designs in personal computers

 

While 64-bit microprocessor designs have been in use in several markets since the early 1990s (including the Nintendo 64 gaming console in 1996), the early 2000s saw the introduction of 64-bit microprocessors targeted at the PC market.

With AMD's introduction of a 64-bit architecture backwards-compatible with x86, x86-64 (also called AMD64), in September 2003, followed by Intel's near fully compatible 64-bit extensions (first called IA-32e or EM64T, later renamed Intel 64), the 64-bit desktop era began. Both versions can run 32-bit legacy applications without any performance penalty as well as new 64-bit software. With operating systems Windows XP x64, Windows Vista x64, Windows 7 x64, Linux, BSD, and Mac OS X that run 64-bit native, the software is also geared to fully utilize the capabilities of such processors. The move to 64 bits is more than just an increase in register size from the IA-32 as it also doubles the number of general-purpose registers.

 

Above is from Wikipedia and I found this tit bit fascinating,

 

In 1997, about 55% of all CPUs sold in the world are 8-bit microcontrollers, over two billion of which were sold.^[46]

 

In 2002, less than 10% of all the CPUs sold in the world were 32-bit or more. Of all the 32-bit CPUs sold, about 2% are used in desktop or laptop personal computers.

 

In 2003, about US$44 (equivalent to $57.28 in 2016) billion worth of microprocessors were manufactured and sold.^[48] Although about half of that money was spent on CPUs used in desktop or laptop personal computers, those count for only about 2% of all CPUs sold.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor

 

Some interesting facts indeed.

 

[securitybreach]

[raymac46]

I postulate five categories of system based upon hardware - mostly the CPU but other things like memory, PATA vs SATA, video come into it.

• Leading edge - Intel Kaby Lake, AMD's upcoming Zen architecture
  
• Trailing edge - multicore 64 bit machines from both Intel and AMD
  
• Obsolete - dual core 64 bit (Athlon X2,) 64 bit Atom netbook processors, dual/single core 64 bit Intel P4
  
• Crap - 32 bit Atom, single core 32 bit Intel P4
  
• Real Crap - 32 bit AMD that won't support Flash, Pentium III or earlier
  

By these criteria, the only crap I have in my basement museum today is a couple of early gen Intel based netbooks from 2008. If 32 bit dies tomorrow I can just take those to the recycler. I have a newer netbook which is 64 bit capable.

Most of us here are likely trailing edge types with the odd piece of obsolete kit.

We like the fact that Linux can extend the life of a computer but after a while...pah. I doubt that any of us are leading edge types except maybe the Arch Linux fans, and that is a software thing - not hardware. Very few Linux users are going to buy the latest hardware and expect it to run perfectly with Linux - trailing edge is the sweet spot for us.

I'm surprised 32 bit O/S is as popular as sunrat says. I bet a lot of it is going into netbooks. With the price of used desktops today nobody should want to run a piece of crap like an early 2005 Dell Dimension P4. My son-in-law has one sitting in his basement and I already told him it's best to recycle it. Your mileage may vary of course.

Edited January 27, 2017 by raymac46

[securitybreach]

Well I generally stay about 1 or 2 generations behind due to the costs involved. Like right now, my main machine has a i7-4790K, 32gb of DDR3 2400MHz, GTX 970, etc. but I still consider it leading edge as it is faster than most computers out there.

[raymac46]

You are closer to leading edge than most of us likely. My two machines have Sandy Bridge i5 and AMD Trinity microprocessors. That is about 3-5 years behind the times. My video cards are newer, but not the latest.

[securitybreach]

Then again, who has $600+ for a top of the line(well some cost a lot more than that) graphics card. I generally pay 200-300 hundred for one every few years.

[raymac46]

I think you need a more powerful one because of your multi-screen setup. I am OK with 1080p and a single screen so I have an Nvidia GTX 950 for games. The R7 360 I use for Linux is weaker but still better than integrated graphics.

[securitybreach]

I think you need a more powerful one because of your multi-screen setup. I am OK with 1080p and a single screen so I have an Nvidia GTX 950 for games. The R7 360 I use for Linux is weaker but still better than integrated graphics.

 

Yeah my poor GTX 970 is pushing:

 

HP Z30i 30" IPS LED Backlit Monitor @ 2560x1600

HP 27es 27" IPS LED HD Monitor @ 1920x1080

HP LA2306x 23" LCD Monitor @ 1920x1080

ViewSonic VX2453mh 24" LED Monitor @ 1920x1080

 

[sunrat]

Back of leading edge is good for Linux. My current one built 6 months ago is i5-6500/GTX970/16GB RAM. Skylake is a couple of years old now, well supported by Linux. I had my old Core2Duo E8500 for 8 years and hope to keep this one about the same. Actually, the main reason I upgraded was for games, otherwise it was still quite good.

roger@mxbrain:~$ inxi -F
System: Host: mxbrain Kernel: 4.7.0-0.bpo.1-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Xfce 4.12.2
	 Distro: MX-16_x64 Metamorphosis 12 December 2016
CPU:	 Quad core Intel Core i5-6500 (-MCP-) cache: 6144 KB
	 clock speeds: max: 3600 MHz 1: 800 MHz 2: 800 MHz 3: 800 MHz 4: 800 MHz
Graphics: Card: NVIDIA Device 13c2
	 Display Server: X.Org 1.16.4 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa,nouveau)
	 Resolution: 3840x2160@60.00hz

[securitybreach]

Nice

[raymac46]

ray@ray-basement-SSD ~ $ inxi -Fz
System: Host: ray-basement-SSD Kernel: 4.4.0-53-generic x86_64 (64 bit)
	 Desktop: Cinnamon 3.2.7 Distro: Linux Mint 18.1 Serena
Machine: System: Gigabyte product: N/A
	 Mobo: Gigabyte model: F2A85XM-D3H
	 Bios: American Megatrends v: F3 date: 04/08/2013
CPU:	 Quad core AMD A8-5600K APU with Radeon HD Graphics (-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB
	 clock speeds: max: 3600 MHz 1: 1900 MHz 2: 1400 MHz 3: 1900 MHz
	 4: 1900 MHz
Graphics: Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Tobago PRO [Radeon R7 360 / R9 360 OEM]
	 Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: ati,radeon (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
	 Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
	 GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on AMD BONAIRE (DRM 2.43.0, LLVM 3.8.0)
	 GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0
Audio:	 Card-1 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] FCH Azalia Controller
	 driver: snd_hda_intel
	 Card-2 Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] Tobago HDMI Audio [Radeon R7 360 / R9 360 OEM]
	 driver: snd_hda_intel
	 Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.4.0-53-generic
Network: Card-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
	 driver: r8169
	 IF: enp2s0 state: down mac: <filter>
	 Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR9287 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)
	 driver: ath9k
	 IF: wlp4s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives: HDD Total Size: 1128.2GB (9.0% used)
	 ID-1: /dev/sda model: TOSHIBA_THNSNH12 size: 128.0GB
	 ID-2: /dev/sdb model: TOSHIBA_DT01ACA1 size: 1000.2GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 102G used: 9.1G (10%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
	 ID-2: swap-1 size: 17.12GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda5
RAID:	 No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors: System Temperatures: cpu: 0.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 27.0
	 Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:	 Processes: 202 Uptime: 32 min Memory: 1191.7/16059.6MB
	 Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.35
ray@ray-basement-SSD ~ $

 

Not as powerful but it gets me there.

Edited January 28, 2017 by raymac46

[abarbarian]

Not sure if my pc is Trailing Edge or Leading Edge can someone advise please ?

 

 

 

The Chronos drive is a ssd that I picked up for a song,

 

 

This is shaping up to be a banner year for SSD adoption. The Kingston SSDNow V300 Series SV300S3D7 we reviewed recently won accolades for an excellent price/performance ratio, but the Mushkin 120GB Chronos Deluxe ($105 list) aims to challenge Kingston for the title. The Mushkin 120GB Chronos Deluxe offers even higher performance than the V300 at virtually the same price point. That's actually a bit surprising given how much the two drives have in common. They're both 120GB drives that use SandForce's older SF-2281 controller. They both support SATA 3.0 and a maximum 6Gbps transfer rate. Mushkin claims a mean time before failure (MTBF) of two million hours, while the Kingston's V300 is just one million, but these statistics don't map very well to real-world failure rates, regardless.

Despite their common technological heritage, Mushkin and Kingston quote rather different performance figures. Kingston claims sequential read/write speeds of 450MBps, while Mushkin states the Chronos Deluxe should hit 560MBps sequential read and 515MBps sequential write.

 

http://uk.pcmag.com/...-chronos-deluxe

Edited January 28, 2017 by abarbarian

[raymac46]

Definitely an oldie but goodie. The SSD will really help though. Can you run 64 bit on that machine?

[Hedon James]

Well I generally stay about 1 or 2 generations behind due to the costs involved. Like right now, my main machine has a i7-4790K, 32gb of DDR3 2400MHz, GTX 970, etc. but I still consider it leading edge as it is faster than most computers out there.

 

In addition to Ray's comments regarding expected life and driver support, lower costs is what makes his "trailing edge" category the sweet spot, IMO! Looks like you and I have very similar hardware specs...I like it! I'm also sitting on an i7-4700 series Xeon and 32GB of RAM, but using the onboard Intel graphics. I may upgrade that someday, but I don't "need" it; onboard graphics and open-source drivers are no issue for me. And running an LXDE-based 'Buntu distro with *box window managers simply SCREAMS on this machine! I know you're an Arch guy, but what are you running in Arch SB? A desktop environment? A naked window manager only? Which one(s)? just curious what you're using to work out that i7 cpu?! LOL!

 

System: Host: Asus-SS Kernel: 4.4.0-59-generic x86_64 (64 bit)

Desktop: Fluxbox 1.3.5 Distro: Ubuntu 16.04 xenial

Machine: System: ASUS product: All Series

Mobo: ASUSTeK model: Z87M-PLUS v: Rev X.0x

Bios: American Megatrends v: 0311 date: 04/18/2013

CPU: Quad core Intel Core i7-4770 (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB

clock speeds: max: 3900 MHz 1: 3400 MHz 2: 3400 MHz 3: 3475 MHz

4: 3400 MHz 5: 3407 MHz 6: 3400 MHz 7: 3401 MHz 8: 3402 MHz

Graphics: Card: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics Controller

Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)

Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz

GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Haswell Desktop

GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 11.2.0

[securitybreach]

I use i3wm and mostly terminal apps but I generally keep a whole lot of tabs chrome open at once.

 

 

I used to run a lot of VMs on my main rig but now I have a server with dual Xeons and 96gb of ram:

 

[Hedon James]

can't hide it....I'm a little jealous of your i7 CPU clock speeds! I can't imagine that extra speed coupled with an even lighter i3 window manager. Aw...who am i kidding....YES I CAN!

[securitybreach]

can't hide it....I'm a little jealous of your i7 CPU clock speeds! I can't imagine that extra speed coupled with an even lighter i3 window manager. Aw...who am i kidding....YES I CAN!

 

hehehe

[abarbarian]

Definitely an oldie but goodie. The SSD will really help though. Can you run 64 bit on that machine?

 

No I can only do 32 bit as yer right this is quite old. Someone was dumping it due to a upgrade , said it had been running ok but that they had taken out the hard drive and destroyed it. Why do folk do that ? So I took it home and popped in that spare ssd and away it went. The blooming thing has travelled at least a couple of thousand miles as I used it as a travelling box.

Works really well for surfing, watching movies on the tv and a small amount of picture reorganising. All in all very satisfactory and it wer freeeee.

 

Edited January 28, 2017 by abarbarian

[Hedon James]

Definitely an oldie but goodie. The SSD will really help though. Can you run 64 bit on that machine?

 

No I can only do 32 bit as yer right this is quite old. Someone was dumping it due to a upgrade , said it had been running ok but that they had taken out the hard drive and destroyed it. Why do folk do that ? So I took it home and popped in that spare ssd and away it went. The blooming thing has travelled at least a couple of thousand miles as I used it as a travelling box.

Works really well for surfing, watching movies on the tv and a small amount of picture reorganising. All in all very satisfactory and it wer freeeee.

 

 

Probably because they had personal and/or sensitive data on there and were smart enough to know to "destroy" the data if disposing of the machine; but not informed enough to know how to overwrite the entire drive with zeroes? just a theory...

[securitybreach]

Definitely an oldie but goodie. The SSD will really help though. Can you run 64 bit on that machine?

 

No I can only do 32 bit as yer right this is quite old. Someone was dumping it due to a upgrade , said it had been running ok but that they had taken out the hard drive and destroyed it. Why do folk do that ? So I took it home and popped in that spare ssd and away it went. The blooming thing has travelled at least a couple of thousand miles as I used it as a travelling box.

Works really well for surfing, watching movies on the tv and a small amount of picture reorganising. All in all very satisfactory and it wer freeeee.

 

 

Probably because they had personal and/or sensitive data on there and were smart enough to know to "destroy" the data if disposing of the machine; but not informed enough to know how to overwrite the entire drive with zeroes? just a theory...

 

Well drilling through the platter will make sure the data is not recoverable. Even after zeroing out a drive, the data can be recovered. That is why most companies (including where I work) use the DoD standard and do a minimum of three passes over drives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_erasure#Standards

 

It usually takes about 4 hours to wipe a 500gb harddrive with 3 passes. The pain is the workstations that have 3 harddrives which usually take more of the day to wipe. Luckily I have a large work area so I can stage or wipe multiple machines at once.

[Hedon James]

well there ya go....I am an "experienced" and "knowledgeable" computer user and, while I know to overwrite the drive with zeroes, I did NOT know that it required 3 passes! Lucky for me, I monitor SMART health of drives and purchase replacements at first signs of failure; and I'm kinda OCD about backups (bad experience that took YEARS to truly recover from, as I had to reconstruct irreplaceable templates & data, piece by piece...NEVER AGAIN?!). Even then, I keep drives until they crash, at which time I drill through the platter. It's 100% fool proof...

[abarbarian]

well there ya go....I am an "experienced" and "knowledgeable" computer user and, while I know to overwrite the drive with zeroes, I did NOT know that it required 3 passes! Lucky for me, I monitor SMART health of drives and purchase replacements at first signs of failure; and I'm kinda OCD about backups (bad experience that took YEARS to truly recover from, as I had to reconstruct irreplaceable templates & data, piece by piece...NEVER AGAIN?!). Even then, I keep drives until they crash, at which time I drill through the platter. It's 100% fool proof...

 

There was a typical media frenzy over data protection and all sorts of wild ideas were put out over the media.The most popular was to physically destroy your hard drive when selling or disposing of your old pc. A total overkill and totally unnecessary.

DBan is all you need and you can use the DoD 5220.22-M protocol.

 

http://analysisandreview.com/systems/how-to-erase-your-hard-drive/

 

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses, malware, and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis. This means it writes over the existing data making it virtually impossible to recover the data it over wrote. Both wipe drive and dariks boot and nuke are great options to erase your hard drive.

All of these utilities will permanently wipe your hard drive clean with military grade “scrubbing” which simply means the software writes over your hard disk so many times it becomes unreadable with today’s technology.

 

http://helpdeskgeek.com/free-tools-review/5-free-programs-to-completely-wipe-a-hard-drive/

 

[Capt.Crow]

Navy wipe is the one I used a long time ago . It could be d/loaded free from somewhere in Virginia.

[sunrat]

It's really, REALLY, expensive and time consuming to recover data from a hard drive after it's been wiped/overwritten even once. Someone (law enforcement, criminals) must really want it badly to even bother.

I'm pretty sure none of my data would be worth it. I'd be happy just to do

dd if=/dev/random of=/dev/$(drive)

[securitybreach]

well there ya go....I am an "experienced" and "knowledgeable" computer user and, while I know to overwrite the drive with zeroes, I did NOT know that it required 3 passes! Lucky for me, I monitor SMART health of drives and purchase replacements at first signs of failure; and I'm kinda OCD about backups (bad experience that took YEARS to truly recover from, as I had to reconstruct irreplaceable templates & data, piece by piece...NEVER AGAIN?!). Even then, I keep drives until they crash, at which time I drill through the platter. It's 100% fool proof...

 

There was a typical media frenzy over data protection and all sorts of wild ideas were put out over the media.The most popular was to physically destroy your hard drive when selling or disposing of your old pc. A total overkill and totally unnecessary.

DBan is all you need and you can use the DoD 5220.22-M protocol.

 

http://analysisandre...our-hard-drive/

 

DBAN is a means of ensuring due diligence in computer recycling, a way of preventing identity theft if you want to sell a computer, and a good way to totally clean a Microsoft Windows installation of viruses, malware, and spyware. DBAN prevents or thoroughly hinders all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis. This means it writes over the existing data making it virtually impossible to recover the data it over wrote. Both wipe drive and dariks boot and nuke are great options to erase your hard drive.

All of these utilities will permanently wipe your hard drive clean with military grade “scrubbing” which simply means the software writes over your hard disk so many times it becomes unreadable with today’s technology.

 

http://helpdeskgeek....e-a-hard-drive/

 

 

Dban is nice but it cannot wipe SSDs: http://dban.org/

[securitybreach]

It's really, REALLY, expensive and time consuming to recover data from a hard drive after it's been wiped/overwritten even once. Someone (law enforcement, criminals) must really want it badly to even bother.

 

Well we have to do that at work due to corporate espionage and such. We have to make sure the data is not recoverable before sending them to disposal.