Linux 7.2 has landed, dragging x86 timing clean out of the nineties by making the Time Stamp Counter mandatory.
I wrote up a quick article on why ditching those ancient legacy fallbacks is good housekeeping, plus a few other bits like cache-aware scheduling and memory tweaks worth noting.
Is anyone still using legacy hardware? If so, what do you use it for?
Yay, reduced functionality 🥳
You know, Windows98 is still available
on archive.org
You spell ReactOS so weird.
Perhaps my grandchildren would spell it correctly.
Yup. Linux isn’t what used to be anymore.
Time to ask for a refund of the 0 money you paid to use it.
That’s not an individual problem, but you liberals only work in an individual and monetary logic. The Evil Empire’s propaganda is efficient.
This is so lemmy.ml it hurts. I’m bookmarking this comment, thank you.
You’re welcome, liberal. Hm, do you realize who were the liberals among the 4 nations?
Water tribe is the closest since they actually elect their leaders, but I wouldn’t even go that far. Fire nation are fascists who most definitely don’t hold elections, even sham ones like a liberal democracy being overtaken by fascists. Earth kingdom is pretty much a stand-in for China. Air nomads are probably closest to Tibet if anything.
Weird that you have to go into a user’s profile to make an argument though.
Do you realize they elect their leaders, or representants, in China? Do you know a lick about the Chinese system? Liberalism is proto facism, every liberal government was licking Hitler’s boots in the 1930s, so the Fire Nation is what happens after the ultimate Liberalism, in which unchecked competition and social darwinism win. Do air nomads have slavery like they do in Tibet? And the Earth Kingdom is way more akin to the late Feudal/Early National Mercantilist European regions.
It was worth, because we had this conversation.
I actually didn’t even get what you meant by “4 nations” until boonhet pointed it out, heh.
I don’t know what you’re going on about; Earth Kings, Queens, tons of Earth Kingdom names and places (like the Forbidden Palace) are clear references to ancient Chinese history. Including the Dai Li. It doesn’t have much to do with modern China though; the Earth Kingdom never moved out of the past until it burned to the ground.
Air Nomad names are Tibetan. Tenzin. Gyatso. If those mountain temples aren’t Tibetan, I don’t know what is. And they all died to imperialist invaders, simply because they wouldn’t cooperate. They were quite traditional in their own way though (including living with sexes separated), and all we really see of their government is some kind of elder council.
The Fire Nation islands were largely ruled by regional, despotic clans until Fire Lord rather shrewdly and brutally consolidated power into a single royal lineage. Then they decided to spread the “gift” of their industrialization and culture around the world, trying to enforce a singular culture. The only thing “liberal” about them (for a time) was some social norms, like those around gender; we see a lot of female Fire nation troops in all eras, for instance, and some progressive feeling institutions within.
The Water Tribes were notoriously close-knit, traditional, conservative. I think they were more of an elder theocracy until the modern era, and even that was kind of a struggle.
Republic City was modeled after New York and Hong Kong, but TBH has a lot in common with the rest of modern China too? Some of the structures are Southeast Asian. The origin complicates things too; they were Earth Kingdom, invaded and modernized into a Fire Nation colony, who then gained their independence post-world-war.
…We have the subcultures I guess. Or the villains. Amon was basically a populist communist (and right about a lot) with some family issues, Unalaq a megalomaniac theocrat, Zaheer was an anarchist straight from db0 (who made some good points), Kuvira was kind of Tech Bro Hitler, but she also saved the Earth Kingdom from total anarchy. The context is different though. They never really have the context of those ideologies in the worlds’ history.
The references aren’t pure; the creators were clear that each place is multicultural and fictional, not an expy of a nation, but I think that makes the references more interesting.
But the whole theme of the franchise is that no one nation, no individual, no political system or movement, is really a pure good or bad. They all exist in a difficult balance with each other. So I don’t think using the four nations as some kind of “liberal analogue” is very constructive.
I didn’t know ancient China a historically divine mandane ruled nation of warring tribes of dynasties had eletrtions.
Are you fucking stupid? It’s a stand in for ancient China not modern China you moron. It literally is a monarchy based on divine mandante.
Dude. I gave you the benefit of the doubt in spite of your instance. You actually succeeded only in being disappointing. Do better.
You have more faith in humanity than me. Thanks for being a good example of being a better persons.
You make it sound like no one can just go keep the older hardware alive by forking.
I love the “just fork it” argument.
Look, Elon, maybe we can’t solo a project like that if we’re still using old hardware, okay?
Sorry if that made you frown behind your shades. Ask the poolside waiter for a other cocktail.
The fairy tail of fork freedom, just the fairy tail of market freedom.
Y’all are really pathetic.
Sir, I think you are overreacting. Nobody is running a 7+ Linux Kernel on a 486 machine. Even if you have microcontrollers with a 486 instruction set, I am pretty sure they already fixed the timestamp issue, or they don’t need Linux at all since it’s an embedded application.
I’m not what I used to be
You’re right, it’s way better.
"downvotes won’t change the reality, corpo lickers
This happens every time I point put that losing these “old” kernel capabilities is in fact a loss.
Let them be stupid about it, all the code still exists to undo these bad decisions one day. It’ll just be more work than it would otherwise be to fix what they broke.
I put them in the same category as AI sycophants, they can’t see three feet beyond their own nose.
Short-sighted kids are a little more common after we fired the mentors and documenters in our field: they don’t know how or why we did such dumb things before and thus can’t avoid them. It’s like how America fired all its inspectors and now suffer en masse from salmonella and explosive diarrhea from tainted food: causal.
What exactly is the utility of the code, though? Is it so these really ancient machines stay up-to-date/secure in societal collapse or something?
I’d be sympathetic to that, but the chips this depreciates are so rare that you won’t find many to use, in that scenario… and in the rare exceptions, using an older kernel version would be fine.
How many hundreds of megabytes were saved by removing it?
Also an AMD K5 or IBM/Cyrix 6x86 might not be in your Steam Deck but that doesn’t make it a one off exception. There’s no reason we should have to use outdated software when the reason the new software doesn’t work is artificial. Apple does that kind of nonsense, Linux shouldn’t.
…You’re talking about saved megabytes being trivial, in reference to machines that have megabytes of memory in total?
It’s not about saved space anyway, it’s about support. Some features are compromised by the requirement to keep this old code, though I’m not qualified to say to what extent.
And again, who is “we?”
Who’s still using a Cyril 6x86 that isn’t doing it for personal/recreational reasons? If society collapses, how many would there be to use?
I’d be sympathetic if we were talking about, say, a Pentium 4, but just don’t buy the narrative that this is inconveniencing anyone. These things do not exist as utilitarian devices anymore. It’s not making anyone use outdated, insecure software that isn’t choosing to do so anyway.
“Trust me bro”
In your estimation clearly nobody. You’re evading the question of why they should be artificially forced to use outdated software by denying enthusiasts who want to use a kernel built by an enthusiast and then by a bunch of enthusiasts for enthusiasts exist. 🤦♂️
I’m sorry, but I have a bit more trust in the Linux kernel maintainers on the technicals of this issue than you or I.
I do know enough to know that a Cyril 6x86 is problematic to use with many modern applications. I find it hard to believe anyone using one needs a modern kernel feature for something, and any other PC is unavailable.
I mean, at the very least, I think they’d need another PC to build a custom kernel themselves? Can you even build Linux 7.1 on that system now?
Why don’t you support a Linux distro that runs on prehistoric hardware?
It’s very easy to spend other peoples time than offer your own for something you clearly don’t care enough about.
If you missed the comment. Previous kernel version is supported until 2035. That’s 9 more years. You need any longer than that?
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What are you using the old x86 timing functionality for, or rather what would it be needed for?
Virtually nobody is going to run kernel 7.2 on a 90s CPU without a time stamp chip. Its good practice to prune old and largely unused features once and a while
With an ifdef.
No, cause that means keeping that code maintained when things change too. So basically, no difference
Also kernel 6.12 has support until 2035, so it’s not like anyone running these CPUs would be missing out on security updates for a while.
I’m sure you’ll be devastated to learn that Linux stopped supporting the i386 in 2012.
And this change basically just drops support for the i486. In 2026. 13 years after they dropped support for the i386. Those processors came out in 1985 and 1989 respectively. If this keeps up, we might lose support for the first Pentium CPUs (released in 1993) around 2040…
I couldn’t imagine running a modern OS on those chips, or even how I would go about installing it. We are talking about computers pre-USB and CD-ROM drives. Average hard disks were under 100MB, average ram was under 10MB. The rare specialty distros that can fit on a floppy are likely heavily modifying their kernals to work / fit anyway. I don’t understand why people are outraged by this.
There’s just a few vocals not the majority. I know we still have a few i486 running and even 1 i386 running. There not connected to anything and just perform the same simple task they have for decades so updates are virtually meaningless. Not uncommon in power, water, rail, and other utilities.
It’s easy to understand. They are objectively fucking stupid and like to be outraged for the sake of it. That or they are literally trolls
These people are literally not worth any amount of effort to pay attention to if they are the former and if they are the latter then remember rule 1. Don’t feed the trolls.
Why on earth you are still relying on 30+ year old CPU’s? Are you a supermarket owner on a third world country?
Hey sir, supermarket owners in 3rd world countries use newer stuff, no need to shit on us as if we were still living in the stone age.
Only George RR Martin in his little old Wordstar word processor would run on a 486 computer with DOS. And I doubt he is a Linux user, or if he is making updates to make his Kernel up-to-date with the current releases.
Utilities still use them. If it’s not broke, why fix it.
Those devices also don’t get updated, touched or fucked with. So any changes to newer kernels matter as much as as the answer to what fucking dirt taste like.
It literally doesn’t. So being mad at the removal is fucking retarded.
Some people are.
Maybe, but I think that they will not upgrade the system, even without this change there is no reason to use a 7.x kernel on a 30+ Yeats old hardware
Yeah God forbid the poor still use a secure and updated OS…
If you’re using a 30+ year old computer in the modern day, you’ve already sacrificed security.
The price and availability of a 15 year old computer is almost the same as a 30 year old computer, you can get a fully functional 1st gen i5 PC that will sprint circles around the highest end 90’s PC for $40. Honestly, most people are just e-wasting computers that old, I’m sure you could easily get them for free, hell, lots of people would pay you to take them off their hands.
i486 is an antique now. It’s an artifact more expensive than less-ancient PCs.
It would require quite an expert to setup with a 7.X kernel, especially with network access.
I’m all for old hardware support, but there’s basically no scenario where this hurts anyone struggling to get by.
Omg. You people are ridiculous. 🤣
No “poors” are running a 486. You would take the best part of and hour to boot a modern distro on a 66MHz (that’s 0.066GHz for you kids) 486. That’s if it would boot at all - which it likely wouldn’t.
Like they would run on a i368 or i468 cpu. Thats pentium 2, at least. And guess what, those are still supported ( basically pentium 1 and up )
I’m pretty sure any Rpi is more powerful, smaller, and more efficient than any computer hardware from 30 years ago lol.
True, but imagine the cost of having to set that up as a third world market owner
Less than the cost of the power of running a 35 year old CPU for a year I’m pretty sure. They still have to pay for electricity in the third world. And wages. If your employees take a bunch of extra time to do really simple things on the computer, that also costs money.
Could also probably get a couple grand for a working i486 PC at this point, it’s a museum piece.
No - nobody is still using one that would be running a modern distro. Anyone relying on hardware this old is already managing their own ecosystem of software.
We’re talking about computers that have clock speeds in the megahertz range FFS. They’re slower than an ESP32 and take a lot more power.
Nothing of value was lost.
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MOS 6502 support when?
My man were talking about hardware from like the 90s lol. Linux is amazing on keeping old hardware going, but even it has to move on at some point.