[Rule-list] Red Hat No Longer Supports 486

[Colin Mattoon]

On Sat, 19 Oct 2002 19:18:56 +0200
Martin Stricker <shugal at gmx.de> wrote:<and I clipped for brevity>

> 
> I don't have a 486 for testing. :-(( But I don't think we need to worry
> too much - as in previous releases the only things expressively built
> for non-i386 are the kernel and the glibc. Glibc even is included as
> i386 RPM, only the kernel is not (i586, i686 and athlon). As an
> interesting side not, the CDs are called Red Hat Linux_i386! *grin* I'm
> rather hopeful that the only thing we'll need to provide is the i386
> kernel, which should be easy (but big, 13+ MB).
> 
I'm not certain of the facts -- not even certain that it is possible -- but I have read elsewhere that Red Hat now compiles most of the distribution optimized for i686 without actually excluding the use of earlier processors. If this IS true, it MAY account for some of what I have observerd as instability and decreased performance of Red Hat 7.3 versus, for example, Slackware 8.1 on 486 and P1 machines.

Don't know, and it may be something else, maybe even coincidental, and I've never attempted to run "benchmarks," but I have taken the trouble to use the sweep hand on my wrist watch to compare times required to open applications after "clicking" on them, and I'd estimate that many of them require as much as 15 to 20 percent more time to load on a Red Hat 7.3 system as the same application does on a Slackware 8.1 installation on the same low tier machine. 
And, of course, if this is true, it may also be that the reverse is true when comparing performance on a P IV or Athlon, but I haven't got either at my disposal to test the theory.

Later,
Colin Mattoon


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