Gentoo Linux to drop Itanium support as Funtoo fork enters 'Hobby Mode'
- Reference: 1724085847
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/08/19/gentoo_drops_ia64_funtoo_falters/
- Source link:
The source-based Gentoo Linux distribution, which still supports a wide range of CPU architectures, will soon support one less. The [1]project leaders announced that it is removing support for Intel's Itanium processor family.
It had little choice in this. Like any other distro, Gentoo relies on upstream support for a platform in order to keep it working. The Linux kernel [2]nearly removed Itanic support in February 2023, and finally did so in [3]kernel 6.7 last October . As [4]we predicted the following month , nobody has stepped up to maintain out-of-tree support.
[5]
That was followed earlier this year with confirmation that [6]GCC 15 would also drop Itanium support . While distros with fixed release cycles can keep things around for a little longer – for instance, [7]antiX Linux 23 still offers the option of kernel 4.9 – this is not true for a rolling-release distro such as Gentoo, which is based on the ever-changing current upstream code. Although GCC 15 [8]is not out yet , once a CPU architecture is not supported in either the kernel itself or the compilers used to build a kernel, that really is a hard block on Gentoo supporting Itanic.
Funtoo may be foundering
Meanwhile, Funtoo, the distro that [9]Gentoo founder Daniel Robbins started next, has a somewhat uncertain future. Robbins, who [10]stepped away from Gentoo in 2004 , went on to found another source-based distro, which uses different tooling. Late last month, he [11]announced its end , saying:
There is not a successor BDFL for Funtoo nor am I interested in trying to find one, or hand the project off to someone else.
A few weeks later, though, Robbins has [12]changed his mind . He now says that the project will continue:
[13]Linux updates with an undo function? Some distros have that
[14]Compared to other distros, Vanilla OS 2 'Orchid' is rewriting how Linux works
[15]Linux Mint 22 'Wilma' still the Bedrock choice for moving off Windows
[16]OpenBSD enthusiast cooks up guide for the technically timid
Borrowing a phrase from Cameron Kaiser, developer of TenFourFox (a Firefox fork for PowerPC Macs) Funtoo Linux will be entering "Hobby Mode".
Dr Cameron Kaiser, whose Canon Cat restoration we [17]recently covered , has an implausible number of fingers in as many pies, and until a few years ago maintained the [18]last web browser for PowerMacs .
There is some more background information on Gentoo's decision in this [19]mailing list post describing the states of the various architectures that the distro supports. To us, this reads like some very major housekeeping would really help the project… and if Mr Robbins' hobby project becomes too onerous, perhaps some form of merger between them in the future? ®
Bootnote
Our thanks to Register reader Rony Muniz for letting us know about the end (or is it?) of the Funtoo project.
Get our [20]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.gentoo.org/news/2024/08/14/Gentoo-drops-IA-64-support.html
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/16/itanium_linux_kernel/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/30/linux_kernel_6_7_rundown/
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/21/saving_linux_on_itanium/
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZsPAhLabTtlU84sxn3NWKAAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/12/gcc_15_sinks_itanic/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/01/antix_23/
[8] https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-15/changes.html
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2002/01/24/the_linuxamd_agp_bug_whos/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2005/06/14/microsoft_gentoo/
[11] https://forums.funtoo.org/topic/5182-all-good-things-must-come-to-an-end/
[12] https://forums.funtoo.org/topic/5185-funtoo-continues-in-hobby-mode/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/01/linux_rollback_options/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/31/vanilla_os_friendly_radical/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/29/linus_mint_22_wilma/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/25/openbsd_for_the_people/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/31/the_canon_cat/
[18] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/31/tenfourfox_dev_quits/
[19] https://public-inbox.gentoo.org/gentoo-dev/75654daa-c5fc-45c8-a104-fae43b9ca490@gentoo.org/T/
[20] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
[Author here]
TBH, I read a number of documents purporting to explain how and more importantly why Funtoo differed from Gentoo, but I was not able to extract enough meaningful info to summarise it in the article.
I remember meeting with a group of Gentoo users and developers at a Linux conf in London about 20 years ago, and trying to explain to them that Gentoo had no answers for the sort of stuff I wanted to customise in a Linux distro. It was not possible with their tools. They were baffled. Why would anyone want a pre-SysV init, such as a BSD init? Why would anyone want to tick a box to disable dynamic linking and use static binaries? Why would anyone want a read-only root filesystem with all state banished to a specific named directory tree, which could be mounted over the network for a totally stateless client?
It's very much the same sort of experience I had meeting with some core KDE developers in 2022.
They *think* they provide vast customisability but it's only because they have very narrow, limited imaginations and are unaware that there is a box to think outside of.
Now end Windows
Itanium got the end it deserved. Now please rid the world of Microsoft Windows. It's far worse than Itanium.
Re: Now end Windows
[Author here]
> Now please rid the world of Microsoft Windows.
Deep inside Windows NT is a really good OS that MS could still excavate if it had the will.
Some off the cuff brainstorming...
Remove the GUI from the kernel completely. To hell with performance overheads. Nobody cares any more. Banish it back to userland where it was in NT 3.x.
Remove networking; put it back in a module that can be removed totally, as it could in NT 3.x/4.x. Make it possible to remove it, purge all config, and reinstall it at will.
Kill WSL, which was a mistake. Make the POSIX environment mimic Linux, and make it optional. If that's too hard, make it FreeBSD or NetBSD.
Banish all traces of .NET. That was only there in case the DOJ split 'em up. Burn it in a fire; it was a bad plan. Leave only the cross-platform FOSS stuff, entirely separate.
Strip it down to a bare text-mode kernel, akin to its ancestor VMS, and maybe even drop Win32. Make Win64 the only option. That kills 90% of the malware.
Then build it back properly, all modular, all removable and purgable without killing the OS. GUI apps run only in isolated sandboxes, maybe even lightweight dedicated diskless VMs.
Re: Now end Windows
It's too late, just like when I left a brace of pheasants in the boot of my car for a week in high summer. Even after being stripped down and professionally cleaned, you could never open the boot again without remembering the stench, so I had to get rid of it and move on to something else.
Re: Now end Windows
You had to re-boot?
> Funtoo fork enters 'Hobby Mode'.
Was Funtoo not always hobby mode? There's nothing wrong with that, it didn't need to claim otherwise.
>> Welcome! Funtoo Linux (distrowatch) is a community-developed Linux meta-distribution and evolution of Gentoo Linux.
Another example where the "evolution" doesn't quite pan out. The Lindy effect is real!