[gentoo-dev] Re: Missing: Universal-CD - Gentoo discriminates shell and networkless users

["Duncan" <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> posted
1160497461.10595.12.camel@inertia.twi-31o2.org, excerpted below, on  Tue,
10 Oct 2006 12:24:21 -0400:

> There's a difference between "support" and "ability".  You will retain the
> ability to install on < i686 machines.  We just don't want to support it. 
> This means we aren't going to be pushing out lots of new media for them.
> 
> I have a set of legacy media that I plan on pushing out.  It is all built
> with the 2006.1 snapshot.  The media is an installcd, a stage set
> (stage1/2/3) for "x86" compiled against the no-nptl profile, a stage set
> for "i586" compiled against the 2006.1 profile, and a stage set for "i586"
> compiled against the no-nptl profile.  I don't plan on upgrading these
> until we switch over to the new multiple-inheritance profiles, at which
> point, I'll likely build a set of stages again for legacy hardware.  The
> stages won't be supported, but they'll be available.

That's exactly the sort of thing I had in mind.  Not supported means lower
priority or even roll your-own install media (or simply bootstrap Gentoo
from some other distribution), and that it's considered acceptable to
close bugs (at Gentoo package maintainer prerogative, of course) related to
586 or lower as WONTFIX, NOTABUG, or NEEDINFO (in this case, a patch, no
patch, no fix, patch, happy to).

As was pointed out by someone from embedded recently, due to its
flexibility, people install Gentoo based systems on all sorts of stuff, as
long as there's a GCC or the like and a kernel that supports it (not said
but what I read into it). Older x86 would be no exception, and might
in fact continue to be supported to some extent thru embedded (if they
want to take it on, of course).  In fact, from what I've read, pentium
class x86 is quite a popular solution for certain embedded applications,
so that would be a rather logical way to go.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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