On Dec 18, 2005, at 9:40 PM, Rodrigo Barbosa wrote:
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> On Sun, Dec 18, 2005 at 09:24:33PM -0600, Kevin Krieser wrote:
>>> # rpm -q --qf "%{ARCH}\n" kernel
>>> i586
>>>
>>> Unless you mean that CentOS provides 586 kernels, even if RH
>>> doesn't.
>>>
>>> In any case, I think it needs clarification.
>>
>> Apparently Centos recompiles it for 586. I figured that they would
>> have the same limitation in this regard than Redhat.
>
> That is why I proposed a clarification. I don't have any RH
> machines here,
> and every one I used in the past 2 years were 686+, so I could not
> verify
> it.
>
> Since it would be either a misinterpretation of what redhat
> distributes,
> or CentOS building for i586, I got confusing, at least for me.
>
>> At work we still have to use Redhat, due to customer requirements.
>
> I really can't see anyone paying for RHEL and using it on outdated
> hardware. Of course I might be wrong here, and I'm sure there are
> some exceptions. Maybe test boxes. In any case, I can understand why
> RH doesn't ship 586- kernels.
>
> []s
>
> PS: Drifting too far into politics now. If we decide to continue this
> discussion, I would like to suggest the linux-practices list :)
>
> - --
> Rodrigo Barbosa <rodrigob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> "Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur"
> "Be excellent to each other ..." - Bill & Ted (Wyld Stallyns)
>
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In our case, our first Linux port, from SCO Openserver, targeted
Redhat 7.1 on these platforms, where money wasn't available to
upgrade much of the older computers. We also target newer computers,
which had the disadvantages that the obsolete version of SCO we were
using didn't support many of the newer features, such as PCMCIA.
Redhat 7.1 worked fine for a couple versions, then Redhat decided to
drop support for their non EL distributions, and it was determined
that RHEL 2.1 was a relatively easy port, since it was based on 7.2,
and had security support without having to do the security patches
ourselves.
Now, there is a desire to support an accredited OS, which essentially
requires either a version of Suse, or Redhat 3 or later.
So that is how you can get into a Enterprise level OS for obsolete
hardware :)
I also can understand why a company like Redhat won't support old
hardware like this out of the box. Who cares, in the enterprise
realm, whether Redhat can provide the fastest web server on 486, when
you can buy 3 gigahertz computers with 1 gig or more RAM for as cheap
as they are nowadays in more widely available platforms. By not
supporting it, Redhat doesn't have to test, keep all these
configurations around, etc.
This is kind of an issue on the LKML right now. Not 486's, but
trying to support large workloads on 32 bit computers when people can
go to 64 bit CPUs, for example, where many of the limitations go away.
