Re: [arch-general] Fwd: [arch-dev-public] i686 and SSE2

2016-09-24 Thread Doug Newgard 
On Sat, 24 Sep 2016 22:24:32 +0200
Ralf Mardorf  wrote:

> ...IMO we could assume that
> FreeBSD users are a similar target group as Arch users. If so, then it
> could cause a lot of pain for Arch users and maintainers, too.
> 
> Regards,
> Ralf

I wouldn't assume that. BSDs in general are very conservative about updates,
which is exactly the opposite of Arch. There are already packages in the repos
that require SSE2, including Chromium.

Re: [arch-general] Fwd: [arch-dev-public] i686 and SSE2

2016-09-24 Thread Ralf Mardorf 
On Mon, 19 Sep 2016 20:03:52 +0200, Sebastiaan Lokhorst wrote:
>You cannot seriously say "optimised for modern processors" and "i686"
>in the same sentence.

FWIW

https://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2016-September/273691.html

;)

I'm a x86_64 user, so I don't care about it regarding my needs. However,
Arch users who don't need new machines for their needs, easily could run
into the same issue, as this FreeBSD user. The whole FreeBSD list
missed the forest for the trees. I only noticed it, because I'm
subscribed to another FreeBSD list, too. IMO we could assume that
FreeBSD users are a similar target group as Arch users. If so, then it
could cause a lot of pain for Arch users and maintainers, too.

Regards,
Ralf

Re: [arch-general] Fwd: [arch-dev-public] i686 and SSE2

2016-09-19 Thread Sebastiaan Lokhorst via arch-general 
2016-09-19 12:22 GMT+02:00 Florian Pritz via arch-dev-public <
arch-dev-pub...@archlinux.org>:
>
> I'm not really sure why we want to even invest time in making all i686
> packages use more features. Most of our users run x86_64 already so maybe
> we
> should think about increasing feature support there since that will have a
> bigger impact.


This is an excellent point. Be it i686, i686+SSE2, i786, or whatever, they
are all legacy platforms. You cannot seriously say "optimised for modern
processors" and "i686" in the same sentence. I don't see how there is much
gain from optimising them, especially since most users are using x86_64
anyway.

In my opinion, we should keep i686 as it is, as a legacy platform, until it
is used so little that we drop it completely. Anyone who is concerned about
performance has moved to x86_64 a long time ago.


Sebastiaan