ubuntu-i686

Revision 3 as of 2006-04-20 15:29:14

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Summary

Make a seperate main/universe/multiverse/restricted repo for the i686 arch. This may involve dissolving the 386 repo, but doesn't have too. This shouldn't be that hard as most of the debian build tools are automated by now. The problem is getting another build server OR stealing time from another and then the storage space.

This would mean everything from the x-server to gtk+ to firefox to openoffice to mono to gnome would be optimized for your processor.

Rationale

  1. Gentoo. ArchLinux. Slackware. These distros are generally all faster then ubuntu. Dapper is the fastest ubuntu yet, but still isn't as quick as these distros. Gentoo and ArchLinux's clam to this speed in the fact that they are compiled for the architecture that is on your computer. Why not make Edgy even faster?

  2. You only need a Pentium 2 processor. Can we somehow check the ubuntu hardware database to see how many current ubuntu users need only the 386 arch? (or the 486, or 586 arch?) http://hwdb.ubuntu.com/

  3. Easy to do. Just setup a build server? I don't know exactly how this is done, but I'm sure there is a ubuntu developer who could get a 686 build server up and running very quickly.

Use cases

Scope

Design

Implementation

Code

Data preservation and migration

Outstanding issues

BoF agenda and discussion

  • a half-way house is to optimise for 686, but generate code that runs on 386. A lot of optimisations are done on the basis of cache size, etc., not just register usage.
  • the new repo need only have the migrated packages. Many packages, like python code are arch independent, or have very little code. the key packages which would benefit could move first. E.g. libc6-686 would become libc6 and you'd always get the best one for you. decompression and compression algorithms would benefit, as a lot of this goes on in the background.
  • Make a list of the key packages which would benefit, and generate *-686 versions for them. This already exists for libc6, mplayer, and a few others. Write a list of candidates and edit their source packages to use different compiler flags. Benchmark!

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