Drop support for x86-32
Quoted 6 lines · On Friday 24 August 2012 19:05:53 wbrana wrote:
Quoted 3 lines · Martin Nybo Andersen
What I'd hate even more is rendering my old working hardware useless by removing x86-32 support from the kernel. To reason the removal by saying "Microsoft plans to do it" just makes me go bonkers...
Your old hardware will work fine with long term kernel.
That's right, but new hardware, that I wish to use with the old machines might not because of no backporting of new drivers. Same goes for new software utilising newer kernel features.
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These legacy apps will most likely be compiled for x86-32 and not x32 (an argument for not removing x86-32 support on a running x86-64 kernel).
Which legacy apps do you mean?
Those mentioned by Chris Friesen, whose arguments you apparently ignored.
Going back to your original arguments:
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x86-32
- is deprecated since Linux supports X32.
No. X32 is merely yet another ABI supported by Linux.
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- will slow down adoption of X32
Perhaps. But that would rather be because of low benefits offered by x32 (not being able to run on legacy hardware is not a benefit (and not its intension)).
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- there won't be X32 versions of many software
You are allowed to compile most of the software running on Linux yourself. If you want a binary to use the x32 ABI, go compile.
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- if new ABI was added, old one should be removed
No. If kernel.org runs out of diskspace, I'd rather sponsor some new disks. And, x32 is an ABI for the x86-64 architecture, while x86-32 is an architecture in itself.
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- wastes time of developers who can spend their time supporting X32 instead of x86-32 or support x86-64 only as 99% of users will be able to run x86-64 software if x86-32 will be dropped
No. If, for instance, an m68k maintainer/developer stops maintaining m68k support, nobody is telling him to continue his works on, say, sparc or whatever hyped architecture.
In other words: It costs exactly *nothing* for us to have x86-32 support. What is does cost, though, is the maintainers/developers spare time and goodwill. Something we all should appreciate.
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- wouldn't be dropped this year, but there should be plan when it will be dropped e.g. when Windows 9 will be released
No. That plan will come automagically when x86-32 is not used anymore and when somebody works on a patch to remove x86-32 support.
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Cheers, Martin