From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (woodpecker.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.subspace.kernel.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 7D21543CEC4 for ; Wed, 8 Jul 2026 12:22:22 +0000 (UTC) Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=140.211.166.183 ARC-Seal:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1783513344; cv=none; b=DLRLRvIdimXuWQqjSJkgiFIrpvrqxEhdtPPNs1R+4NYCV92V+OKoQqdjYva0vKQhQ2P1NFrR39/zc7J4tAjPBi5hpL/A/10aWfWMpEtiq6h9OtQcwXvSg3MexNJMBpnHOrQooYu3RPKFVyIccOebjpWbmldG8sla4ly/WcNG/AU= ARC-Message-Signature:i=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=subspace.kernel.org; s=arc-20240116; t=1783513344; c=relaxed/simple; bh=WqAea9kG+FGVtk3CUsbSUyUwk9dQQdqrEAA9cwpfczo=; h=From:To:Cc:Subject:In-Reply-To:References:Date:Message-ID: MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=JEs/6k83fxg3wDyF0tuisedRvBGRxFTDrU5NYHoJcZjDGdVPLFEaYvPcF7voi8Ib51dYZLR3z2vwMQVxIS8OCV/YK/rWLNw3rTgGJf1P0L/TNvv4+yxroTLWpjxTK7MmP1SyfLMh4nNpJ3uprNJAcMrjyMYu467364PTeLUbV+0= ARC-Authentication-Results:i=1; smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=gentoo.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=gentoo.org; arc=none smtp.client-ip=140.211.166.183 Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; dmarc=pass (p=none dis=none) header.from=gentoo.org Authentication-Results: smtp.subspace.kernel.org; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=gentoo.org Received: from mop.sam.mop (2.8.3.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.a.5.c.d.c.d.9.1.0.b.8.0.1.0.0.2.ip6.arpa [IPv6:2001:8b0:19dc:dc5a::382]) (using TLSv1.3 with cipher TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 (256/256 bits) key-exchange x25519 server-signature RSA-PSS (4096 bits) server-digest SHA256) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: sam) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id 89CEC340FBD; Wed, 08 Jul 2026 12:22:19 +0000 (UTC) From: Sam James To: "Arnd Bergmann" Cc: "Sebastian Andrzej Siewior" , "John Paul Adrian Glaubitz" , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, x86@kernel.org, "H. Peter Anvin" , "Borislav Petkov" , "Dave Hansen" , "Ingo Molnar" , "Jonathan Corbet" , "Thomas Gleixner" , "Neal Gompa" , "Tomas Glozar" , "Maciej W. Rozycki" , "Richard Purdie" Subject: Re: [PATCH v2] x86: Start removing X86_X32_ABI In-Reply-To: Organization: Gentoo References: <20260707212252.bYk3-AlU@linutronix.de> <20260708073648.c4xJo-8d@linutronix.de> User-Agent: mu4e 1.14.2; emacs 31.0.90 Date: Wed, 08 Jul 2026 13:22:16 +0100 Message-ID: <87tsq97jt3.fsf@gentoo.org> Precedence: bulk X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org List-Id: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; boundary="=-=-="; micalg=pgp-sha512; protocol="application/pgp-signature" --=-=-= Content-Type: text/plain Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable "Arnd Bergmann" writes: > On Wed, Jul 8, 2026, at 09:36, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote: >> On 2026-07-08 08:31:30 [+0200], John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: >>> > Since there is practically no real use for x32, start removing it by >>> > removing the symbol first, not allowing to enable it. Should nothing >>> > happening by the end of the year, it will removed after the last LTS >>> > kernel this year. >>>=20 >>> As mentioned before, there are still actively maintained Debian and Gen= too >>> ports of x32, so I guess the last paragraph is rather subjective. >> >> On the Debian ports side: lacks a browser like firefox or chromium. No >> native ocaml compiler. libreoffice is not present. >> Not once released in contrast to kFreeBSD. >> >> This does not look like healthy port that will become eventually a >> release architecture. To quote the introduction paragraph of ports.d.o: >> | The goal of this machine is to provide an infrastructure for unofficial >> | architectures until they are integrated in the main Debian archive. > > x32 is a bit different since you can't have a pure x32 distro > anyway but always need to install an x86_64 distro first > to get a working kernel and base system before you can choose > a mix 32-bit and 64-bit packages. This is not that different > from armhf and i686, which run fine on 64-bit hardware but > always require you to start with a 64-bit installer. [for > different reasons though: armhf has an installer but its > kernel only works on 32-bit machines; i686 kernels can > theoretically run on older 64-bit hardware but Debian > no longer provides an installer for it] > > As far as I understand, the typical use case for debian-x32 is > to run just a single performance-critical application, either > using "dpkg --add-architecture" or mmdebstrap/schroot. I used > to do that for having a faster gcc a decade ago when I was using > x86 build machines, though these days that probably fails > due to the linker running out of virtual memory in large > configurations. > > Either approach can keep working using Debian Forky as the host > distro as long as that gets security updates for linux-image-7.3, > presumaby mid-2032 for LTS or at the latest 2037 with the > ELTS/SLTS kernels. This does require a choice for the Debian > x32 team though: either freeze userspace to Forky as well for > compatibility with 'dpkg --add-architecture', or stay on > unstable/testing and only allow schroot installs going forward. > > My guess is that it's similar for Gentoo, which doesn't have > an x32 installer or kernel package either, though their kernel > support times are apparently much shorter than Debian's. No, there are people who actually use pure x32 without any sort of multilib on Gentoo. Someone even noticed when we broke our live media for it: https://bugs.gentoo.org/908599. Are there masses of these people? No, I don't believe so, and I'm not going to strenuously object to its removal, but there are users of it. > > Arnd sam --=-=-= Content-Type: application/pgp-signature; name="signature.asc" -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- iQEBBAEWCgCpFiEEJaa7iN2bdkxrVUHCc4QJ9SDfkZAFAmpOQPgbFIAAAAAABAAO bWFudTIsMi41KzEuMTIsMiwyXxSAAAAAAC4AKGlzc3Vlci1mcHJAbm90YXRpb25z Lm9wZW5wZ3AuZmlmdGhob3JzZW1hbi5uZXQyNUE2QkI4OEREOUI3NjRDNkI1NTQx QzI3Mzg0MDlGNTIwREY5MTkwDxxzYW1AZ2VudG9vLm9yZwAKCRBzhAn1IN+RkJid AP9zbFNrNKQXd/T7TLX0aLlW09qlp7jeZfYBrzNRT81p5AD+PkRHzSsT2sJt6xHy P+lyOe/IbNP4tfATj5+U9ytw6Ac= =hJqI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --=-=-=--