[Gllug] retro computing

[Nix]

On Fri, 07 Oct 2005, Mike Brodbelt uttered the following:
> Today it'd be harder - many distros have installers compiled with the
> 486 instruction set assumed, so not all will even run on a 386. Of
> course, the star prize has to be getting Gentoo running on it, then
> doing an emerge of Gnome. To win, you have to outlive the compile :-)

And don't even think about multithreading C++ programs, or running *any*
C++ programs efficiently, as a 486 instruction crept into libstdc++'s
threadsafety atomicity macros in GCC 3.2, and nobody noticed until 3.4;
so you have to do instruction emulation in-kernel to run C++ programs
compiled with those versions of G++ (or above); that won't be atomic,
but there is no comparable way of getting atomicity on a 386 anyway. The
only known implementation of that emulation also has known unfixed
vulnerabilities.

And that's the *real* reason distros have been dropping 386 support.
(There's also the minor fact that almost nobody has working hardware
anymore, and the 486 has now been on sale for *twenty years*...)

-- 
`Next: FEMA neglects to take into account the possibility of
fire in Old Balsawood Town (currently in its fifth year of drought
and home of the General Grant Home for Compulsive Arsonists).'
            --- James Nicoll
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