2 Jun
2013
2 Jun
'13
11:51 p.m.
On Sun, 2 Jun 2013, Dave McGuire wrote:
I deal with embedded i386 stuff all the time. I probably see it just as
often as embedded 8051 stuff. Heck if I thought it would have done any
good I could have sent Linus an i386 SBC, but from what I read he had his
mind made up that it was just easier to apply the patch someone submitted
that removed support for the i386 from the mainline Linux kernel.
On 06/02/2013 07:04 AM, Liam Proven wrote:
No doubt about that at all. If someone else doesn't take care of it and
get i386 support folded back into the mainline Linux kernel by the time I
get my current projects and tasks in order, I plan to do something about
it, be it a patch or an outright fork. I've not done much kernel hacking
since the 2.0.x days, but that past experience would no doubt help.
You do realise that kernel 3.8 explicitly dropped
support for 80386?
It's now 80486 or above.
That was a really stupid thing to do. I suspect it'll be "undone" at
some point. The actual
i386 is long dead; it came out nearly 30y ago. It's
completely dead in the embedded space - ARM or Geode offer far better
performance, price:performance and performance/Watt.
80386, oddly, is far from "long dead".
If your perspective is only for desktoppy-things sold in retail stores,
sure I can see that, but it's as common now as it ever was (which is to
say "moderately so") in the embedded world, and is still currently
produced and sold. (whether that's a good thing or not is another
matter entirely)