3 Jun
2013
3 Jun
'13
11:27 a.m.
On Sun, 2 Jun 2013 11:21:58 -0500 (CDT)
Tothwolf <tothwolf at concentric.net> wrote:
The Linux kernel is still only as big as you compile
it. It can still be
built pretty small. The issue of dropping i386 is a different matter --
some developers were "inconvenienced" by some of the old code, and rather
than redesign it so that they could handle some newer stuff while still
supporting the i386, they simply removed that code entirely.
NetBSD had (or still
has, I didn't check) the same problem. The problem
is that the i80386 lacks some functionality that all following i80x86
have. So the code is full of
if (i80386) {
...
} else {
...
}
or
#ifdef i80386
...
#else
...
#endif
This creatas a mess, makes the code less readable, is a constant source
of bugs and even hurts performance. The i80386 is ancient PeeCee shit.
I don't see any point in keeping this legacy.
At least: One idea was to create a special i80386 port of NetBSD that
supported the i80386 and only the i80386. Quite simple, given the
superbe multi platform support of NetBSD. But nobody found it woth the
work to keep that old i80386 shit alive.
--
\end{Jochen}
\ref{http://www.unixag-kl.fh-kl.de/~jkunz/}