Re: [gentoo-dev] Gentoo i486 support

[Mart Raudsepp <leio@gentoo.org>]

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Ühel kenal päeval, K, 22.08.2018 kell 09:08, kirjutas Rich Freeman:
> On Wed, Aug 22, 2018 at 8:26 AM Ben Kohler <bkohler@gentoo.org>
> wrote:
> > 
> > 1) Adjust x86 profile defaults to drop the problematic -march=i686.
> > This would be more in line with amd64 profiles (et al), which set
> > no
> > -march value so it can run on any hardware for this arch.
> > 
> 
> My knee-jerk reaction was that this is a bad idea, but after a bit of
> thought there are some arguments in favor of this:
> 
> First, the argument against: i386 is VERY old.

The topic is i486, not i386.
i486 stages allows to more easily start up gentoo on i486 and i586
hardware, possibly also for some i686.
E.g. if I'd ever get around to working on Geode graphics again, I would
want a i486 or i586 stage to start with, as CMOV on the Geode is a
performance penalty, not benefit, plus glibc i486 or i586 glibc
intrinsics were faster than i686 ones as well. This includes a million
or so OLPC XO-1's out there, not that they'd ever install Gentoo
though, but just an example. I think some old VIAs are another?
i686 builds sometimes wrongly make use of NOPL instruction as well,
though hopefully that was fixed for good in binutils.

Anyways, my point is that we are talking about being able to boot i486
and i586 here, not i386.
Personally I can manage my potential own future needs without weekly
stages.


Mart

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