svn commit: r333388 - in head: . share/man/man4 sys/confsys/dev/nxge sys/modules sys/modules/nxge tools/kerneldoc/subsys tools/toolstools/tools/nxge usr.sbin/bsdconfig/share

[Eugene Grosbein]

24.05.2018 3:22, Brooks Davis wrote:

>>> Except for old computers and old software that segfaults on 64-bit, how many people still use i386?
>>> Full disclosure: I'd like to see i386 deorbited before I retire.
>> Plese don't. I routinely use FreeBSD11/i386 for cheap VPS hosts having less than 2G memory
>> because amd64 has noticeable overhead. I even have ZFS-only i386 VPS, here is live example with 1G only:
>>
>> Mem: 10M Active, 69M Inact, 230M Wired, 685M Free
>> ARC: 75M Total, 1953K MFU, 31M MRU, 172K Anon, 592K Header, 42M Other
>>      3500K Compressed, 29M Uncompressed, 8.61:1 Ratio
>> Swap: 1024M Total, 1024M Free
>>
>> The VPS has only 20G of disk space and ZFS compression gives
>> compressratio 2.22x for ports, 2.51x for src, 2.29x for obj
>> and 1.95x for installed i386 system plus other software and data.
> 
> I think we're quite a ways from being ready to axe i386.
> 
> For VPS applications, we should probably get x32 support in place which
> should give us the best of both worlds.
> 
> That said, we either need to rev the i386 ABI to use a 64-bit time_t or
> kill it in the not to distant future or we risk embedded systems failing
> in place in 2038.  If we assume a 15 year life for most equipment to
> fail electrically or mechanically that says FreeBSD 13 shouldn't support
> the current i386 ABI.

Why everyone's talking of hardware only? FreeBSD/i386 as virtual machine guest
with memory-intensive kernel subsystems like ZFS and/or networking tasks
using plenty of mbufs benefits significantly comparing with amd64 version.

It runs just fine, why even consider killing it?