On Wed, Apr 04, 2018 at 10:09:03AM -0700, Paul Rogers wrote: > I was hoping Intel was as good as its word, as I use Core-2 systems daily for > internet access, still rely on 1st Gen i7s, and as a retired person cannot > afford to "keep-up", but according to PCWorld, "The chipmaker’s latest > microcode revision update now says planned revisions are “stopped” for CPUs > based on the Penryn (2007), Yorkfield (2007), Wolfdale (2007), Bloomfield > (2008), Clarksfield (2009), Jasper Forest (2010), and Atom “SoFIA” (2015), > ... This puts the final nail in the coffin for the Core 2 series of chips, > where Intel’s first quad-core processors debuted. Some first-gen Core CPUs > also get the axe, including the Intel Core i7-970, 980, 980X, and 990X." >
I understand your concerns, and I'm no fan of intel (I buy my own kit, and the retail stuff (except atoms, which aren't much use for building from source) has always been "unnecessarily expensive", although no-longer to the same extent now that AMD are back in the game). But - on x86_64 (I know you prefer 32-bit, and the meltdown fixes for that have not yet arrived upstream) most of these problems are hard to leverage unless you are running in a VM (if so, you could try to get information from other VMs or the host), and recent kernels should help make exploitation harder (as should recent releases of the main graphical browsers re javascript attempts to steal your data). OTOH, the days of PS/2 mice and D-SUB video are all-but gone. This adds to the expense of changing to newer machines. Summary: if you can run current kernels (i.e. x86_64) and current desktop software, the situation is unlikely to be catastrophic for a home user. ĸen -- Before the universe began, there was a sound. It went: "One, two, ONE, two, three, four" [...] The cataclysmic power chord that followed was the creation of time and space and matter and it does Not Fade Away. - wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Music_With_Rocks_In -- http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/lfs-support FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/faq.html Unsubscribe: See the above information page Do not top post on this list. A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? A: Top-posting. Q: What is the most annoying thing in e-mail? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style
