OSNews

So you are saying apple is compiling everything with a special atom compiler flag for the last 2 years?

Homor Simpson mode""uuuh what does this flag do..."


guess they don't use GCC to compile

Edited 2009-11-09 13:09 UTC

What is special about the kernel that does not apply to the rest of the software stack? "

The kernel presents an abstracted view of the hardware to userspace. If the whole software stack needed to be recompiled for a micro-architecture like Atom, then how come all your existing programs on Windows and Linux work on an Atom machine? You can't tell me that the developer of Elastomania had ten years advance warning that Atom was going to be released?

What are you talking about? I can't speak for Ubuntu, but I ran Slackware and Arch on some of the first Atom machines and there wasn't any recompiling needed except some driver modules to support some of the netbook hardware. Also, if you didn't notice, vanilla Windows XP/Vista/7 all run as well and you can't tell me they've just happened to be using a special compiler flag all this time. Methinks maybe you are confusing Atom with some other chip?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_atom#Architecture

Hmmm, I think I may have not thought this through properly.

When I first got a machine with an Atom CPU, I tried it with several liveCDs. They all went into a "kernel panic" and wouldn't boot. It wasn't until a few months later when the next round of Linux distribution releases occurred that suddenly all of the new liveCDs being released would boot.

Then came this article, with its observation that it was quite possible to produce an OS that would run on x86 but not Atom.

I just assumed that Atom must lack some normally-assumed CPU extensions, I suppose.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86#Extensions

But perhaps not. It is quite possible that all of the observations about x86 OSes not booting on Atom can be simply explained by a lack of drivers required by the kernel.



Not my experience. I got kernel panics for a few months after my first purchase of an Atom CPU, until the various Linux distribution maintainers caught up.

Edited 2009-11-09 22:48 UTC

What is special about the kernel that does not apply to the rest of the software stack?

When Atom chips first came out, most Linux distributions would not run on them. There were special projects which took normal Linux distributions (such as Ubuntu) and re-compiled everything with a special compiler flag. "

Most Linux distributions ran just fine on the original Atom netbooks. They are x86-compatible CPUs after all. However, there were no drivers for the chipsets that came with the CPUs. Thus, you couldn't use them to their fullest (no wireless, no graphics accel, etc). But the CPUs themselves were compatible.

I've had Debian Etch, and Kubuntu 8.04/8.10/9.04 running on Asus netbooks using Atom CPUs. The install ran just fine. What I could do after the install depended on the OS version, as some had drivers while others didn'.