On Sat, May 20, 2023 at 09:15:00AM +0200, Josh Triplett wrote: > How easily could we add 64-bit system detection to the i386 installer, > and a message saying something like: > > "You're installing the i386 architecture on a 64-bit system. While this > will work, this is the last release it'll be supported. We recommend > installing the 64-bit amd64 architecture instead.
This is not a valid use for i386. Running the i386 kernel on _modern_ hardware is insecure, slower (esp. if you have a non-tiny amount of memory), etc. We should put a big fat warnings for _that_. On the other hand, it's okayish to run 32-bit userland -- in fact, in some cases it might be quite a bit faster¹, as long as you use the appropriate kernel. Which is 32-bit for ancient hardware (including some first 64-bit-capable models), and 64-bit today. Meow! [¹]. Sometimes amd64 wins by a lot due to more wider registers and SSE, sometimes i386 win hugely due to halved pointers and better code density, which allows using a higher-tier cache. We could have been using x32 to get both, but oh well... -- ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ The ill-thought conversion to time64_t will make us suffer from ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ the Y292B problem. So let's move the Epoch by 435451400064000000 ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ (plus a safety margin in case of bad physicists) and make it ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ unsigned -- that'll almost double the range.
