Linux for non-CMOV processors

[jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org (Jarod Wilson)]

On Feb 13, 2011, at 8:54 AM, edwardp-jjFNsPSvq+iXDw4h08c5KA at public.gmane.org wrote:

> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/F12X86Support
> 
> Apparently, a decision was made to drop support for non-CMOV processors 
> in Fedora, Ubuntu as well as Mandriva.
> 
> Looking at the limited info on the link above, there seemed to be some 
> resistance to making that change, just for the sake of a /minimal/ 
> increase in performance.

Every bit of performance increase helps.


> Was there any particular reason why this was done?

1) Performance benefits for people running on systems that were built
this century.

2) Formally killing off support for ancient hardware platforms that
no distro folks of sane mind want the burden of having to support.


> Even though my K6-2 
> box still runs, I have been unsuccessful locating a new Linux distro 
> version that will now boot on this, because the K6-2 doesn't have CMOV.

There's always Gentoo, LFS or similar.


> I'm not sure it was a wise decision either to drop non-CMOV processor 
> support...

>From a support standpoint, its a fantastically GOOD idea. If someone were
to file a bug against Fedora, saying "xyz doesn't work on my ~10 year old
K6-2", I doubt if many active developers have functional hardware to test
on, and the return on investment is so incredibly low, compared with the
bazillion other things that need fixing in the Linux world, that it just
isn't worth it to try to support something that old and relatively
uncommon. Especially when replacement hardware that is far more powerful
and power-efficient can be had for under $200 these days.


-- 
Jarod Wilson
jarod-ajLrJawYSntWk0Htik3J/w at public.gmane.org