
ArchLinux ends i686 support - kevlar1818
https://www.archlinux.org/news/the-end-of-i686-support/
======
mjevans
[multilib] repo is still supported (lib32 packages for x86_64).

This is just the "pure" x86 distribution.

[https://www.archlinux.org/news/phasing-
out-i686-support/](https://www.archlinux.org/news/phasing-out-i686-support/)

[https://www.archlinux.org/news/the-end-
of-i686-support/](https://www.archlinux.org/news/the-end-of-i686-support/)

~~~
lbenes
And the community is taking the torch and will continue to provide updates and
isos.

[https://archlinux32.org](https://archlinux32.org)

------
uluyol
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, good news since it means
more work on architectures people use. On the other hand, this means there is
really just _one_ architecture which usually hurts portability, and that
matters if arch linux ever decides to support arm or something.

~~~
detuur
Arch on ARM works really well though. Has been my daily driver on Raspberry Pi
for a couple of years now.

~~~
turblety
ArchLinux really is great for ARM, and hobby projects in general. I've
struggled to get even Debian running on my Chromebooks multiple times, but the
first time I tried Arch it just worked straight out of the box.

------
thomasdziedzic
Former archlinux developer here (maintained the haskell stack, coq, built an
aur git repo, math packages, created 100s of packages, etc.), I think that
this is a good thing:

I never used i686 even though I built for it.

The way I built packages was on my local laptop (clean chroot). Building for 2
separate architectures involves building 2 separate packages. This doubles the
time it takes for a developer to build. This might not be that bad for smaller
packages, but ghc (haskell compiler) took a long time on my computer. This
means that if it takes an hour to build ghc, it would take 2 hours of my time
to actually build ghc for both platforms. When you're talking about 100s of
packages built many times over several years, this quickly adds up.

The other benefit from removing i686 support is that the packages built for
that architecture were never really tested by developers. I ran x86_64 10
years ago, tested the x86_64 version of my packages, and most of the time
pushed them directly to the main repositories if everything checked out. For
more critical packages, I would push them to testing, let people report any
issues, and then move them after a couple of days. This means that I never
knew if i686 broke or not. This was the case with most of the developers at
the time.

------
zeroDivisible
A bit random question, one which qualifies as "I'm here too long and I'm
afraid to ask now" territory: what's the difference between i686 and x86_64?

How those two architectures differ?

~~~
piinbinary
short version: i686 is a 32bit architecture, and x86_64 is a 64 bit
architecture. It adds things like larger registers (and more of them).

------
steanne
"For users unable to upgrade their hardware to x86_64, an alternative is a
community maintained fork named Arch Linux 32. See their website for details
on migrating existing installations."

[https://archlinux32.org/](https://archlinux32.org/)

------
rcthompson
Wasn't this their April fools joke not too many years ago?

~~~
aleksei
2009, apparently.
[https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_April_Jokes#...](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Arch_Linux_April_Jokes#2009:_Dropping_i686_Support)

There was a small backlash about this a couple of years back when someone
suggested dropping i686 support in the forums.

Apparently no one even noticed this time.

~~~
snuxoll
In 2009 the Core 2 family (Intel's first real 64-bit consumer processors) was
just under 3 years old, it's over a decade since then and even low-end Atom's
are full 64-bit chips now - there's little reason to continue to support
32-bit systems considering their age (and anybody running them should really
upgrade, these older systems are terribly inefficient both in general
performance as well as power draw).

~~~
walrus01
anecdotally, people are regularly throwing away/throwing in the recycling
perfectly good core 2 duo desktops from the 2008-2009 era with 4GB of RAM,
video cards with DVI interface that will drive a 1920x1200 monitor, etc.
Anything older than that from the P4 generation has likely gone to the
recycler long ago.

~~~
snuxoll
A Core 2 Duo desktop is not what I would consider "perfectly good" anymore,
for the exact same reason I threw my PowerEdge 1950 in the trash - these older
chips will use more power to get the same job done, DDR2's significantly
higher voltage than DDR3 plays a huge role here as well. They may perform
acceptably, but you're paying more in the long run via your power bill.

~~~
zanny
The target audience of a refurb Core 2 desktop has no overlap with the camp
that will have their PC on enough to even bring power efficiency into
consideration. The hundreds saved reusing an otherwise-waste computer would
take decades of rising power bills to make back during which even the _new_
system would probably die well before you broke even.

~~~
snuxoll
Even just going from a system with a Core 2 Duo E8400 to something more recent
like an i5-2400 can result in 50W savings or slightly more at idle. This can
be a big difference in areas with high energy rates (PG&E is something like
$0.25/KWh) when you consider not only idle power draw, but also general
improvements to performance and power efficiency making the CPU take less
power when under everyday load and also returning to idle faster. You could
easily save $30 or more a year, especially considering most people could get
away with the iGPU and use even less power driving a PCIe graphics card.

There's plenty of people offloading sandy bridge or newer systems at this
point and they're dirt cheap, being that I live in Boise, ID the power savings
of desktop components aren't terribly important to ME - but I realize I live
in a little bubble when it comes to cheap electric rates.

~~~
ac29
>There's plenty of people offloading sandy bridge or newer systems at this
point and they're dirt cheap

I recently picked up a couple Ivy Bridge Core-i3 Dell Optiplex desktops for
under $100 each to replace some older machines at work. Totally worth it, and
they came with Win 7 Pro, which can still be upgraded for free to Win 10 Pro.
I'd imagine by this time next year Haswell desktops will have fallen to the
same price.

------
koenigdavidmj
Not much of a shock. Their primary use case is what---power users' desktops?
Those have been 64-bit for almost a decade. Other uses: anything low-power is
ARM, even small dinky laptops (remember netbooks?) are 64-bit, and RAM is
cheap enough that it doesn't really matter that your pointers are double the
length.

~~~
muxator
My old Asus eeepc is an Atom N270, fiercily 32 bits only :)

~~~
my123
Maybe you can find an used Atom N280 model, they're dual-core and 64-bit (I
owned one)

