On Friday 24 August 2012 19:05:53 wbrana wrote: > On 8/24/12, Martin Nybo Andersen <tw...@tweek.dk> wrote: > > What I'd hate even more is rendering my old working hardware useless by > > removing x86-32 support from the kernel. To reason the removal by saying > > "Microsoft plans to do it" just makes me go bonkers... > > Your old hardware will work fine with long term kernel.
That's right, but new hardware, that I wish to use with the old machines might not because of no backporting of new drivers. Same goes for new software utilising newer kernel features. > > These legacy apps will most likely be compiled for x86-32 and not x32 (an > > argument for not removing x86-32 support on a running x86-64 kernel). > > Which legacy apps do you mean? Those mentioned by Chris Friesen, whose arguments you apparently ignored. Going back to your original arguments: > x86-32 > - is deprecated since Linux supports X32. No. X32 is merely yet another ABI supported by Linux. > - will slow down adoption of X32 Perhaps. But that would rather be because of low benefits offered by x32 (not being able to run on legacy hardware is not a benefit (and not its intension)). > - there won't be X32 versions of many software You are allowed to compile most of the software running on Linux yourself. If you want a binary to use the x32 ABI, go compile. > - if new ABI was added, old one should be removed No. If kernel.org runs out of diskspace, I'd rather sponsor some new disks. And, x32 is an ABI for the x86-64 architecture, while x86-32 is an architecture in itself. > - wastes time of developers who can spend their time supporting X32 > instead of x86-32 or support x86-64 only as 99% of users will be able > to run x86-64 software if x86-32 will be dropped No. If, for instance, an m68k maintainer/developer stops maintaining m68k support, nobody is telling him to continue his works on, say, sparc or whatever hyped architecture. In other words: It costs exactly *nothing* for us to have x86-32 support. What is does cost, though, is the maintainers/developers spare time and goodwill. Something we all should appreciate. > - wouldn't be dropped this year, but there should be plan when it will > be dropped e.g. when Windows 9 will be released No. That plan will come automagically when x86-32 is not used anymore and when somebody works on a patch to remove x86-32 support. -- Cheers, Martin -- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majord...@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
