4 ms·

> Such ecosystems come with incredible costs. For instance, rust cannot even compile itself on i386 at present time because it exhausts the address space. is

> Such ecosystems come with incredible costs. For instance, rust cannot even compile itself on i386 at present time because it exhausts the address space. is that really a reason not to use it? nobody is using i386 anymore that is updating to the latest openbsd.

volkadav 5y ago
does amd64 provide a benefit for virtual machines with less than 4gb of ram provisioned? (e.g. i have a small bastion host on obsd 7.0, and even 256mb of ram is slightly overkill based on what i've seen so far of resource usage)
- IcePic 5y ago
  Yes, the larger amount of cpu registers, the very much larger virtual memory space adds performance and security benefits, regardless of if you have less or more than 4G ram.
snvzz 5y ago
I know at least one person who's using openbsd _precisely_ because it is a low-maintenance and relatively safe option that still supports their i386 hardware.
- flatiron 5y ago
  is there any reason they are still using i386 hardware? i can think of a million reasons to upgrade but not many to stay
  - snvzz 5y ago
    It's a laptop with a 32bit cpu. It works for its task, as well as it did when it was purchased. It uses very little power. It has an integrated UPS (laptop's battery). There's absolutely no reason for them to retire that hardware and buy something newer to replace it.
  - slackfan 5y ago
    Not polluting the planet and being a rampant consumer for one is a very good reason not to upgrade. If one is to actually use a computer not as a glorified web terminal, you'll find that for most things that aren't video/audio/image editing computing power really stopped being relevant after about 1998.
    - rhexs 5y ago
      An i386 will use more power than a far cheaper server that’s still 100x as powerful. It would be more “sustainable” to upgrade.
      - slackfan 5y ago
        Kind of had to beat a 2W power draw, tbph.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - anthk 5y ago
      Image editing can be fast enough on a Pentium 3/4 up to 1280x800 and imagemagick. For audio/video, a Pentium 3 or similar would be enough with a good video card, some mplayer/mpv settings to skip the loop filter on decoding and video should be good enough up to 720p on Pentium 4 with SSE2 or pre 2010 Celerons. Celerons from 2010 and beyond can play 108p at 30FPS without sweating. EDIT: I use Slackware and OpenBSD too :D. Fluxbox, Rox, XTerm, Mocp, Djview, MuPDF, Groff+MS, Bitlbee+sic... you don't need a high end machine, for sure. For Rox: mkdir ~/lib cd ~/lib git clone https://github.com/jun7/VideoThumbnail mkdir -p ~/tmp cd ~/tmp git clone https://repo.or.cz/rox-lib.git cd rox-lib cp -r ROX-Lib2 ~/lib Done. Add Zukitre for GTK2/3 themes, the Zukitre theme for Fluxbox (I have a fork for the theme with better settings), lxappearance and maybe Elementary/Tango2+Tango icons as a base for Tango2 icons, and you'll have an elegant and blazing fast desktop. If any, you can install fbmenugen and config it to set some automatic XDG menu entries and some of them to suspend/hibernate your laptop.
      - 5y ago
  - Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
    It could be for reliability reasons as well, Something which was running for decades in a low-maintenance environment can be expected to continue doing so unlike modern semiconductors which are iterated and manufactured at very high volume that longevity is questionable. I've been burned by semiconductors earlier due to bad design/manufacturing e.g. Pentium-D, SD 810 etc. Also with current semiconductor shortage/supply chain issues/inflation, Anything to re-use (or) re-purpose old compute hardware is valuable to many.
  - ben_bai 5y ago
    OpenBSD runs on a lot of different platforms, and for inclusion into base it has to run on every platform. A few years ago this meant even on a VAX. The most "obscure" platform today might be luna88k(m88k).
tedunangst 5y ago
Of course people are still updating.

volkadav 5y ago

does amd64 provide a benefit for virtual machines with less than 4gb of ram provisioned? (e.g. i have a small bastion host on obsd 7.0, and even 256mb of ram is slightly overkill based on what i've seen so far of resource usage)

IcePic 5y ago
Yes, the larger amount of cpu registers, the very much larger virtual memory space adds performance and security benefits, regardless of if you have less or more than 4G ram.

snvzz 5y ago

I know at least one person who's using openbsd _precisely_ because it is a low-maintenance and relatively safe option that still supports their i386 hardware.

flatiron 5y ago
is there any reason they are still using i386 hardware? i can think of a million reasons to upgrade but not many to stay
- snvzz 5y ago
  It's a laptop with a 32bit cpu. It works for its task, as well as it did when it was purchased. It uses very little power. It has an integrated UPS (laptop's battery). There's absolutely no reason for them to retire that hardware and buy something newer to replace it.
- slackfan 5y ago
  Not polluting the planet and being a rampant consumer for one is a very good reason not to upgrade. If one is to actually use a computer not as a glorified web terminal, you'll find that for most things that aren't video/audio/image editing computing power really stopped being relevant after about 1998.
  - rhexs 5y ago
    An i386 will use more power than a far cheaper server that’s still 100x as powerful. It would be more “sustainable” to upgrade.
    - slackfan 5y ago
      Kind of had to beat a 2W power draw, tbph.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - anthk 5y ago
    Image editing can be fast enough on a Pentium 3/4 up to 1280x800 and imagemagick. For audio/video, a Pentium 3 or similar would be enough with a good video card, some mplayer/mpv settings to skip the loop filter on decoding and video should be good enough up to 720p on Pentium 4 with SSE2 or pre 2010 Celerons. Celerons from 2010 and beyond can play 108p at 30FPS without sweating. EDIT: I use Slackware and OpenBSD too :D. Fluxbox, Rox, XTerm, Mocp, Djview, MuPDF, Groff+MS, Bitlbee+sic... you don't need a high end machine, for sure. For Rox: mkdir ~/lib cd ~/lib git clone https://github.com/jun7/VideoThumbnail mkdir -p ~/tmp cd ~/tmp git clone https://repo.or.cz/rox-lib.git cd rox-lib cp -r ROX-Lib2 ~/lib Done. Add Zukitre for GTK2/3 themes, the Zukitre theme for Fluxbox (I have a fork for the theme with better settings), lxappearance and maybe Elementary/Tango2+Tango icons as a base for Tango2 icons, and you'll have an elegant and blazing fast desktop. If any, you can install fbmenugen and config it to set some automatic XDG menu entries and some of them to suspend/hibernate your laptop.
    - 5y ago
- Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
  It could be for reliability reasons as well, Something which was running for decades in a low-maintenance environment can be expected to continue doing so unlike modern semiconductors which are iterated and manufactured at very high volume that longevity is questionable. I've been burned by semiconductors earlier due to bad design/manufacturing e.g. Pentium-D, SD 810 etc. Also with current semiconductor shortage/supply chain issues/inflation, Anything to re-use (or) re-purpose old compute hardware is valuable to many.
- ben_bai 5y ago
  OpenBSD runs on a lot of different platforms, and for inclusion into base it has to run on every platform. A few years ago this meant even on a VAX. The most "obscure" platform today might be luna88k(m88k).

tedunangst 5y ago

Of course people are still updating.