Arch Linux

Description:
Hello fellow Archers.

I apologize for not knowing where to appropriately put my response regarding the new RFC [1] [2].

Basically I get why Allan a while ago proposed to lift the requirements and support more modern processors and their features. I seriously do. As someone who used Gentoo before Arch with all it's rizer flags and optimization potential I get why we want to make use of it.

Please before you go ahead and put the RFC or proposal in stone and rebuild all core packages etc. also announce it properly, discuss it further eventually and highlight what this means exactly. I mean seriously. If for instance, the claim would be the system in general would be faster with more appropriate compiler flags, then wait for the next CPU flaws and the mitigations to defend against it, which is also crippling overall performance, out least in certain workloads as benchmarked by Phoronix.

2 1/2 years ago I and supported by others made sure we got rid of a kernel bug, which affected old Intel CPUs.

The dilemma is I'm still using an Intel Core 2 Duo 8500 and my Arch install happened in 2013-07 and it is rolling along happy ever since. In just a few months it is EIGHT YEARS of having Arch used exclusively and I am really thankful. I could not express my gratitude further with words.

The real dilemma is: my Intel Core 2 Duo will not die and as long as there is the possibility without hardware failure that I am able to use it, then I am going to. I can upgrade to some extent with expansion cards the greatest bottleneck the HDDs to the most modern NVME based drives. It's still supported by Linus Torvalds' kernel with no deprecation in sight.

Now and I miss one crucial CPU feature: SSE4.2.

Does this mean it is basically game over to reach the 10th anniversary with my good old daily workhorse, or is this something one would not notice and just miss out on? Put it this way: does this mean this would be the end of support for any Intel Core 2 Duo's in Arch?

Where do you propose, Core 2 users should migrate to?

If it just means, ffmpeg and a lot a non core related packages are optimized, then this would be a different story.
I build them myself for years with march=native and other PKGBUILD tunings.

Please clarify this a lot. I am in no way stubborn or rude. I really love using Arch. I also own a more modern laptop, which I seldomly use - also equipped with Arch on it.

I am personally want to use my old Core 2 as long as possible, yes, I know, I miss out a lot of speed, performance, fancy new features. I think of it as an old-timer and it has some benefits as well.

I think I am getting old, because the great 'I compile everything from the ground up' and do so much work tuning and tweaking an OS, let alone noticeable compile times is not appealing to me anymore - in regards to Gentoo, even with a AMD Threadripper kind of build- and workhorse. Also what way forward is there left: use Debian?

I am definitely not alone.

[1]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/merge_requests/2
[2]: https://gitlab.archlinux.org/archlinux/rfcs/-/commit/3034941fac9ff11afcf695300755644054766506