On Sun, Jul 23, 2017 at 04:56:56AM -0400, Hendrik Boom wrote:
>On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 11:26:56PM +0200, Adam Borowski wrote:
>> On Sat, Jul 22, 2017 at 06:50:19AM +0100, KatolaZ wrote:
>> > you might probably want to have a look at:
>> >
>> > http://popcon.devuan.org/
>> >
>> > Whatever the statistical significance of those data, it seems that
>> > between 15% and 20% of Devuan installations are on i386. So apparently
>> > there is no reason at all to drop it, rather the opposite.
>>
>> Then this looks like a problem that needs to be looked at. There's no way
>> that many people use gear from ≤ 2004 (or a brief throwback of early Atoms
>> from 2008).
>
>THere's at least one. My laptop runs an Atom processor. It was the
>first EEEPC that was completely Linux-compatible without requiring any
>nonfree drivers, and came out anout a year after the first EEEPC.
>
>Until it came on the market, I was looking with dismay at all the
>hugely expensive, overpowered, battery draining machines on the
>market. Years later, I can still go to a coffee chop for an
>afternoon's writing without needing to bring along a power supply.
>
>It is still performing well. In fact, for some things (videoo codecs
>coe to mind) it runs a lot better now than it did when I bought it)
>Google has abandoned it, but I haven't, and Linux hasn't either.
>
>I have upgraded the RAM from 1 to 2 G, and replaced the hard drive
>with a much bigger one. It's running fine, and hasn't needed repairs.
>
>By contrast, my 64-bit server is on its last legs.
>
>All of these machines are old enough not to have malware built into
>the hardware, as far as I can tell. I'm not looking forward to having
>to upgrade to hardwar containing malware.
>
>Please help keep 32-bit architecture alive. I've been running Devuan
>since the alpha-2 release.
>
>-- hendrik
>
>>
>> --
>> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
>> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ A dumb species has no way to open a tuna can.
>> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ A smart species invents a can opener.
>> ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ A master species delegates.

I'm probably a little late to comment, but here's my two cents' worth.

My laptop, which runs Devuan, is a heavily-used Samsung N150p which was
purchased from a friend for $40 USD, it also runs an Intel Atom processor
(although I prefer ARM), and it is predominantly 32-bit:

$ uname -a
Linux MB 3.16.0-4-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 3.16.39-1 (2016-12-30) i686 GNU/Linux

$ lshw
...
product: Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N450 @ 1.66GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
version: 6.12.10
serial: 0001-06CA-0000-0000-0000-0000
size: 1667MHz
capacity: 1667MHz
width: 64 bits
...

There is 2GB of RAM, and anything that uses "hardware acceleration"
grinds to a halt and can take minutes between screen refreshes.

$ free -h
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2.0G       186M       1.8G       460K        28M        90M
-/+ buffers/cache:        67M       1.9G
Swap:         9.3G         0B       9.3G

I love my laptop, however, because the whole thing is ~8x11 inches, and
can be brought everywhere. I use it for programming from the termninal;
there is no "greeter" installed and it boots straight to getty. I use
a text-mode editor (which will not be mentioned to avoid flames (it's
not emacs ;P)) and that's it.

While the Atom processor DOES support 64-bit computing, it seems that
every instruction takes twice as long -- it takes 30 minutes to boot a
Tails live image. (Yes, I know about heads; it didn't boot.)

For people like me, the "latest and greatest" features are simply useless
overhead that makes things bigger, slower, heavier, hotter, and/or use
more electricity.

With all due respect, I would appreciate it if 32-bit processors would
continue to be supported. (ARM too, I'll finish my Raspberry PI 3B-based
laptop Real Soon Now! (Maybe next weekend... next month...))

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