From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90) Description of problem: For both Raw Hide and the 7.2 beta refresh (Roswell), the i586-based single-CPU kernel package seems to have been dropped. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 2.4.7-2.9 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Hit the above URL, or perform the equivalent FTP navigation. Actual Results: File not found. Expected Results: In previous distros (at least up through 7.1), there has always been an i586-based single-CPU kernel package. Additional info: There is, however, an i586-based SMP kernel. Should I be using that on my single-CPU machine (I'm guessing the answer for that is no), fall back to the i386-based kernel, or wait for a single-CPU i586 kernel package to show up in Raw Hide? Believe it or not, some of us are still running on merely semi-ancient CPUs (in my case, a 90 MHz Pentium MMX, albeit with 128 MB RAM).
Whoops, that should have been a 233 MHz Pentium MMX. I also have a 90 MHz classic Pentium-based machine upon which Linux still runs fine (albeit without graphical workstation capabilities).
The i586 UP kernel has been "obsoleted". I'll explain why: There is little benefit of a i586 kernel over a i386 kernel (gcc will optimize the instruction-scheduling for i586 anyway) and the cd space the i586 kernel took is now used by the Athlon kernel. Unlike the i586 kernel, the athlon kernel DOES make a significant difference in optimization. Re the SMP kernel: a i386 SMP kernel doesn't actually work (there are no i386 SMP machines and the i486 SMP machines that exist don't work with linux) so there the minimum is i586.