Re: Processor requirements

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Thu, 17 Nov 2005 20:07:37 -0500,
"Jonathan S. Shapiro" <address@hidden> wrote:
> In EROS, I decided early *not* to support the i386. EROS required i486
> or better. This is because the i386 does not honor the write-protect bit
> in supervisor mode, and we need this for efficiency in the IPC
> implementation.

The Hurd has never supported anything that doesn't have a coprocessor.

> Given that it is now 2005, does anybody see a need today to support
> processors earlier than i686 in desktop PCs?

I am sure there will be some people shouting "here", but I don't think
we need to target these initially.  For Hurd-on-L4, we made some
decisions early that we would not worry about legacy hardware.

When critical mass is reached, people are automatically going to port
the software to all kind of weird systems, and there is no way to stop
them :) Before that, there is no need, as developers usually will have
decent hardware.

What is more important for me personally, and I am sure others here,
is that we can use free virtualization software like qemu for
development.  But that shouldn't be a problem, I suppose.

Thanks,
Marcus