2 ms·
NetBSD (and perhaps other BSDs) still supports 32-bit I believe. Should be capable of running a modern web browser (Firefox, etc.) as well, though performance
by musicale 3y ago
NetBSD (and perhaps other BSDs) still supports 32-bit I believe.
Should be capable of running a modern web browser (Firefox, etc.) as well, though performance may be an issue depending on the hardware.
- lproven 3y agoThis is true, but incomplete, and more saliently, misses the point. [1] Yes, all the original 3 BSDs support x86-32. But they're not all: quite a few Linux distros still do, including Debian, Alpine, Void, and a number of other lesser-known ones. It's not entirely a legacy platform just yet. [2] The point, though, is not whether they support 32-bit or not. The point is, do they run acceptably well on ~15+ year old hardware? This is not about bitness. Linux supports 32-bit, XP supports 64-bit. That is tangential to the discussion. 64-bit x86 systems have been around for 2 decades now. The real point is that up until about 20y ago, OSes were considerably smaller and quicker than now. Since then all the mainstream ones have got much bigger and much slower with little to show for it. This is not immediately apparent because hardware has got faster. Not all hardware: CPUs haven't improved much. Raw single-core CPU performance scaling fell off a cliff in about 2007 and it will never recover. That everyone ignores this is one of the big lies of the industry. But RAM has got much bigger and faster, and disk drives even more so thanks to SSDs and new interfaces for them. SATA is about as old as x86-64. (Assuming a fresh clean OS -- any OS), put an SSD into a Core 2 Duo, and watch boot times fall through the floor. It's amazing. But install a Linux from the 2020s on that machine and watch it become a slug. Try Windows 7, generally agreed as a good version, on a Core 2 Duo and watch it struggle. Then nuke it and put XP64 on it, and watch the same hardware become fast. I didn't believe it when people told me. So I tried it myself. It's astounding.