I’m just commissioning a new Hyper-V on my home server which is running on a refurbished Dell Optiplex 9010 with a gen 3 Intel i7-3770 CPU. It runs a treat and is not showing any signs of needing replacing.
However, I spotted this rather worrying message as the VM span up. Now I know that Microsoft is annoying a lot of people of insisting Windows 11 runs on relatively new hardware, consigning millions of perfectly functional computers to landfill.
But I didn’t expect Linux to go down this route too? Part of the appeal of Linux is running it on older hardware and saving a small part of the planet.
RHEL deprecated CPU’s in RHEL9 to be x86_64-v2 and higher. Therefore any CPU after 2012. Since Rocky 9 is based on RHEL it also has the same hardware requirements.
On that machine you can use Rocky 8 as it is supported until 2029. After that if you want to continue using Rocky you need newer hardware. I doubt very much you will still be running a computer older than 2012 in 2029+ since it would be pretty slow anyway.
Thanks - I’ll consider going back to Rocky 8. Does seem a little against the philosophy of Linux running everywhere forever but I get that sometimes you have to move on.
Core i7-3770 is still a pretty powerful CPU IMO. 4C/8T with single thread rating of 2,073 compares well with my new desktop PC running AMD Ryzen 7 5700X at 3,770. That’s only ~60% faster.
Sure the later has 16 threads so the overall CPU mark of 26,662 is more than 3770 but this server is basically a NAS with a few low-resource Linux VMs.
I don’t like throwing old but perfectly functional hardware away At least Microsoft’s decision will mean millions of cheap laptops and desktop will flood the market for re-use as Linux boxes.
RHEL 9 also works on x86-64-v2 so you can use Rocky 9 until 2032 on the i7-3770. After that there will probably be other Linux variants available for older CPU architectures.
Reading and writing a file will be the same in 2029 as it is today…
The only technological upgrade would be the storage device. I myself having simply changed to high-speed laptop drives, with an SD card to act as a volume cachine device. With future upgrades possibly changing to SSD drives for everything.
I also use the i7-3770 (‘s’ variant for lower power consumption) but only for ‘workstation’ configurations. I use the lower-power i3-3220t or the i5-3470t for ‘fileserver’ setups, since the system does little more than passing thru I/O requests…
I don’t believe that ‘that’ will change in the future…
Yes, that what one of the points of using Linux… “Don’t throw out your old hardware, install Linux on it, and it’s still usable…”
Since IBM bought RedHat, it will follow the same ‘path’ as MS, forcing users to purchase new hardware (collusion ?) similiar to the ‘flat screen’ television manufacturers not supporting 1440p (though, they’re just a larger version of computer monitors, which ‘do’…) so that you have to purchase new equipment (mainly video cards) to get ‘above 1080p’ resolution…
Found this topic via search. I just noticed the following doing a software update tonight on a Rocky 9.5 VM:
Feb 15 04:24:12 rocky64 kernel: Warning: Deprecated Hardware is
detected: x86_64-v2:AuthenticAMD:AMD Opteron™ Processor 4234 will not
be maintained in a future major release and may be disabled
The kernel is 5.14.0-503.23.1.el9_5.x86_64.
I also have a Ubuntu MATE 24.04 VM, with kernel 6.8.0-53-generic. Oddly, this newer kernel does not have the same deprecation notice. I would think - perhaps naively - that older kernels would support older hardware. Apparently, that is not necessarily the case.
Do different distributions build their kernels differently? Again, I would think distributions would want to minimize the maintenance they have to do, and thus minimize changes to stock kernels.
Red Hat have started deprecating CPU models, so there is a chance that when RHEL10 or Rocky 10 is released your particular CPU may not be supported. You don’t get this message in Ubuntu or Debian, because they haven’t been deprecating the older CPU’s like Red Hat has been doing. At least so far, you never know if they might start to do the same.
And yes, different distros do build their kernels differently, by including/excluding functionality that they want or don’t want to support. You could argue it minimises for them the maintenance they have to do for supporting older CPU’s and therefore providing a smaller sized kernel.
AlmaLinux seems to build additional el10 with x86-64-v2 requirement (but without third-party packages that aint much). That is, different distros can build their packages from same sources, but with different compiler options. More-over, distros like RHEL do tweak their sources. I don’t know whether the warnings about “deprecated, unmaintained, etc” are from Red Hat or from upstream.
Rebuilding for an entirely different architecture is a significant undertaking. In addition to our plans to add RISC-V support in Rocky 10, I’m not seeing a strong demand for an x86-64-v2 build for Rocky, nor am I seeing anyone actively leading such an effort. It’s essential to keep in mind that Rocky is a volunteer-driven project. While we prioritize compatibility with RHEL at the core of our mission, all the work and support provided come from the community’s efforts to build upon and extend Rocky and its upstreams.
@neil, it is the same 64-bit x86 architecture, just v2 feature set. The goal of this is to avoid the organizations, who for some reason need to continue run the old hardware, avoid paying for the ELS subscription, which may not be available for free.
I can help and lead this effort full-time for some time, as Red Hat fired me.
The significant undertaking is primarily from storage and compute size, not from hours worked side. As the hardware could be already sponsored by AWS, the cost for the Rocky project could be free. The technical challenge could be as high as adjusting the compile flags and creating a new arch (builders) in the Koji build system. Existing ones can be reused. I have some experience with this, and I think I can do it.
Support may not be required at all, the build can remain in the spirit of the free open source “as is” “without warranty of any kind, express or implied”. I don’t see any reason why any problems could appear, since the compilers have been quality engineered on v2 as well.
Imagine an organization runs a mix of old and new hardware. It is easier to support systems if those run Rocky 10, than different versions. It will also remove one more reason for organizations to stay on Rocky 9, as well as allows to mix RHEL 10 with Rocky 10.
As Rocky is a community project, from my perspective, it’s crucial that we don’t reduce coverage of old hardware, as deprecating the hardware support may be in the interest of vendors.
At least Microsoft’s decision will mean millions of cheap laptops and desktop will flood the market for re-use as Linux boxes.