A look at the handling of Meltdown and Spectre

Posted Jan 10, 2018 10:04 UTC (Wed) by linusw (subscriber, #40300)
In reply to: A look at the handling of Meltdown and Spectre by kenmoffat
Parent article: A look at the handling of Meltdown and Spectre

i686 and as far back as 486 is actively in use in embedded systems, some even Internet-connected.

The case is the same as with old ARM platforms that I personally struggle to maintain: embedded systems have 20+ years support cycles, and people working with only laptops, desktops and servers in mind don't think they exist. It is one of the big disconnects in our community.

However many of these systems are never updated to newer kernels because of misc fears. But they should, that culture also needs to change.

A look at the handling of Meltdown and Spectre

Posted Jan 10, 2018 10:32 UTC (Wed) by eru (subscriber, #2753) [Link]

But they should, that culture also needs to change.

Demanding that makes sense only if slimming a modern kernel to fit their limitations is even possible... Also the old device drivers they need may have bit-rotted.

A look at the handling of Meltdown and Spectre

Posted Jan 10, 2018 14:06 UTC (Wed) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Quite. Heck, there are probably quite a lot of customers of the late lamented Soekris machines (which used Geodes and then Atoms) that are still using them, 32-bit or no, because they sit in a corner (or nailed to a wall) and *just work*, and because it's hard to find anything which is a small form-factor general-purpose computer (as opposed to a router) for less than insane money with that many NICs. I still see lots of alleged embedded firewall boxes with two or three NICs. No thank you, four expandable to eight is my minimum :)