On Sat 16 Jul 2022 at 18:33:11 (+0100), Darac Marjal wrote: > On 16/07/2022 16:26, Timothy M Butterworth wrote: > > Is anyone running Debian 11 on a processor older than Pentium 4? I > > ask because I would like to bump 32 bit OS support from i386 > > (1985) to i686 Pentium 4 and newer. > > Debian hasn't supported 80386 processors for many years. According to > https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/ch02s01.en.html, the > minimum processor for Debian Stable _is_ currently a 686-class > processor.
Sure, and my oldest PC is running a *-686 kernel. So, the question is, what's below the cutoff—what are we losing? On the Packages page, my kernel is bottom of the heap, with the possible exception of linux-image-5.10.0-13-686-unsigned (mine is signed). > > Nearly all x86-based (IA-32) processors still in use in personal > > computers are supported. This also includes 32-bit AMD and VIA > > (former Cyrix) processors, and processors like the Athlon XP and > > Intel P4 Xeon. > > > > However, Debian GNU/Linux bullseye will/not/run on 586 (Pentium) > > or earlier processors. Well, I have a "Intel® Pentium® M processor 1.50GHz". Unfortunately, "M" does not exactly appear on either a "586←→686" scale, or a "Pentium←→Pentium4" scale. I know its cpu family is 6, and its flags are: fpu vme de pse tsc msr mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss tm pbe bts est tm2. Worryingly, I don't see "pae", which has been fussed about in the past. Cheers, David.
