Ultimate Edition Forum

Highlights of Linux 3.8 (http://www.linux.com):
1. So Long, 386
While it seems unlikely that many will shed a tear over this change, Linux 3.8 does indeed remove support for the Intel 386 processor, as was widely reported late last year when the decision was made. What that means? Just that it can't be run on very, very old PCs. “This tree removes ancient-386-CPUs support and thus zaps quite a bit of complexity... which has plagued us with extra work whenever we wanted to change SMP primitives, for years,” wrote developer Ingo Molnar in the change submission in December. “Unfortunately there's a nostalgic cost: your old original 386 DX33 system from early 1991 won't be able to boot modern Linux kernels anymore. Sniff.”Fans of older hardware can rest assured, however, that the 486 chip is still supported.
2. A New File System for SSDs
An interesting addition in Linux 3.8, meanwhile, is “F2FS,” an experimental new file system contributed by Samsung that's optimized for flash memory storage devices. While Linux already has several file systems designed for flash devices — including LogFS, JFFS2 and UBIFS — they aren't generally designed for non-native flash devices such as many commonly used solid-state drives (SSDs). F2FS, by contrast, targets SSDs specifically, and is optimized for the way they work. Samsung developer Jaegeuk Kim explained the differences in more detail in a list posting last fall.
3. Btrfs and Ext4 Refinements
Also from the file-system department are improvements in both the Btrfs and Ext4 file systems. In Btrfs, for instance, a new, explicit device replacement operation considerably speeds up the process of removing an old disk and adding a new one. Ext4, meanwhile, has gained the ability to store very small files in the unused inode space, making reading such files much faster while also saving disk space, according to the changelog on Kernel Newbies.

Thanks.

So the next generation of linux will no longer run on my digital clock? No, wait... it uses a 486, lol.

Seriously, until I read about this earlier I had no idea that the 386 was still supported. I had always been confused by there being an i386 (that runs on 32-bit systems, even if they are far more recent than your average 386 CPU) version and an AMD64 (which also happens to run on systems that have Intel CPUs, if they are 64-bit) one. And I have wondered on more than one occasion just how many - of all of the .ISOs on all the OS out there - that have the term "386" in their name would actually install on any computer that uses a 386 CPU? I would tend to put that number somewhere between "almost none" and "none."

I am even more confused by the fact that some distros come in an i386 version while others have only an i686 version (speaking in terms of 32-bit architecture here).

But, to attempt to get back to the topic at hand, as the owner of an almost 10-year old laptop and an even older desktop, I am heartened by the fact that the powers that be are only just now dropping support for such an old CPU. It gives me hope that I will be able to run a more-or-less current linux OS for the foreseeable future.

Also, regarding that new experimental filesystem for SSDs: Samsung created it? <SHUDDERS> Having recently attempted to install Ultimate Edition 3.5 alongside Microsoft's Windows 8 on one of Samsung's shiny new laptops that a friend purchased (his first computer ever and he's 46) that had Samsung's implementation of that UEFI/Secure Boot enabled, only to discover - in the knick of time - that they have had a long-standing bug that, among other things, would have turned said laptop into a rather expensive and equally poor imitation of a doorstop had I gone ahead with that plan (incidentally, I learned that I could have made it reach the same "boat-anchor" state by attempting to install an older version of Windows, lol, so it isn't exactly "just a linux issue," it's a bug that's been with Samsung for a number of years but... I guess there was no money in fixing it? But, anyway, you say Samsung created this new filesystem, huh? I'll pass. Both because of the fear that attempting to use it will become a catastrophe (once bitten, twice shy, as they say) and because I have no intention of supporting a corporation that isn't interested in fixing long-standing bugs and only even addresses the matter after they get tired of unbricking countless returned laptops; if a few hundred thousand people also take the step of avoiding all things Samsung - and also do what I did, which was to send them a (polite) email explaining why, perhaps they will change. But no beast moves without suitable prodding, methinks. (Yeah, I'm still smarting over having to tell my best friend that the first thing I needed to do to install linux on his very first computer - which he hadn't even powered up before dropping it off for me to do so - was to completely format the hard drive, lol. He likes linux (few minor issues - but that's more because he's a redneck with his first computer than because of the OS :rolleyes: ) okay, but was rather put out that I felt the need to hose the OS that was included (as he knew that that OS was also included in the price. He did calm down after I showed him about a dozen reports of people having to ship their new laptops back to Samspunt for unbricking, though.) So... Samsung might be a great friend of linux on paper. In the real world... not so much.