Defaulting to AVX for 64-bit architectures?

[R3n_001]

It's based on Debian, so there's still Debian 32bit out there. For how long I don't know.

What was meant is that there's no official x86 Pale Moon build for Linux.

[__NM64__]

Actually... it does. Still. Check out Q4OS Aquarius with Trinity desktop here.

What was meant is that there's no official x86 Pale Moon build for Linux.

Indeed, I meant x86 builds of Pale Moon for Linux.

Aapparently SSE2 systems are quite a few out there.

SSE2 was introduced with the Pentium 4 and Athlon 64, both of which had large market share (Pentium 4 due to Intel's known shady business tactics against AMD, and Athlon 64 because it's K8 architecture was just that good especially against Intel's woeful Netburst).

what I understand because the amount of x86-only CPUs nowadays is very, very low compared to non-AVX CPUs

You've got it backwards—Intel was actually the hold-out on 32bit with their 1st generation netbook variant of "Diamondville" Atom CPUs from 2008 or so (and, in typical Intel segmentation fashion, the nettop variants of "Diamondville" supported 64bit...) while the current 64bit x86 is actually an AMD invention that was included in all AMD architectures beginning with the Athlon 64 in 2003, hence why it's called AMD64 in some circles (commonly in Linux for example) since Intel's own version of 64bit, Itanium, broke compatibility with x86 (reminds me of IPv6...) and was just all around a failure (especially against AMD's Opteron).

[Drugwash]

What was meant is that there's no official x86 Pale Moon build for Linux.

And I hinted there may still be a need for them albeit small.

You know how it is...When you have everything you want and see one or two persons missing what you have you think "oh well, not my problem". But when you are one of those persons that miss something, then it's a big problem.
I learned to put myself in the other people's shoes before emitting judgements on them. But it's not that world anymore, apparently.

Well, enough said, don't wanna stir a discussion or anything - just said my piece. Going to sleep. Y'all have a good one!

[__NM64__]

You know how it is...When you have everything you want and see one or two persons missing what you have you think "oh well, not my problem". But when you are one of those persons that miss something, then it's a big problem.

I do get that, but in this case it feels like the mark was missed specifically on Linux for how it (commonly?) gets used on not-so-cutting-edge PCs in the desktop space.

[athenian200]

I can understand that the PM team doesn't want to support machines older than 10 years, but the really nasty thing is that Intel crippled their cheaper CPUs too and those are widely used in cheaper or smaller laptops, Mini-PCs and low-power machines.
We had such laptops in school made by HP.

Well, then I hate to say it, but I can only respond with two trite sayings. It is what it is, and you get what you pay for.

Intel clearly didn't intend for those budget CPUs to be in use for very long, probably only producing them to dissuade people from buying used hardware in the first place by providing an alternative. As far as I'm concerned, those budget CPUs were a waste of sand and most people who bought them got screwed, and I'm sorry, but the rest of the computing world isn't going to stop going forward just because you made a bad decision and bought an Intel CPU that was limited to 2009-era Nehalem instruction sets in 2022. The newer instruction sets have existed for long enough that it's becoming a bit ridiculous to be stuck with that as a limit to what we can bake in without people complaining.

So, I guess consider it a lesson learned. Be careful of buying low-end PC parts, you never know how crippled they might be or whether they are cheap because they are missing key features that developers will take advantage of in the next couple years. Like for instance, it would be a bit like saying game developers still shouldn't require more than the amount of power used by the GT 1030 due to it being part of the 10 series, and conveniently thus still work well enough with a 560 Ti, just because something was produced more recently with that older baseline. It doesn't work that way, your budget hardware is only suitable for older stuff and is a replacement for buying used, it's not meant to last.

A use case all the more likely to be appropriate for Linux rather than Windows, running once again into the issue of the AVX requirement on Linux builds being particularly problematic relative to Windows.

On this point, I agree with you, that this going to be a bigger nightmare to deal with on Linux than on Windows. On Windows, there is a 32-bit build to fall back on, Microsoft has encouraged AVX as a semi-official baseline level in MSVC for ages, and also most Windows users are on newer hardware anyway. Linux is just in a worse place overall due to poor 32-bit multilib support and them taking Intel's v2 baseline a bit too seriously, effectively capping themselves at a level that isn't very helpful for us.

Let's just say there's a reason why I am planning to leave my illumos/Solaris builds as SSE2... and may even leave the official Linux build of Epyrus as SSE2 because I suspect that's where a lot of the people stuck on underpowered hardware are, have not decided yet. My gut is telling me that it's safe to flip the AVX switch for Windows, but I feel a sense of anxiety about pulling the same trigger on other operating systems.

[__NM64__]

I just remembered how FoxClone's stand-alone bootable Linux ISO actually includes Pale Moon as its browser of choice due to Pale Moon having the smallest file size of any Linux browser known that is able to navigate FoxClone's website.

An AVX requirement for the browser in that scenario would certainly be sub-ideal (I know I know, it's not Pale Moon's job to make amends for 3rd party software).

Let's just say there's a reason why I am planning to leave my illumos/Solaris builds as SSE2...

Don't suppose it has anything to do with the combo of ECC + integrated graphics? That was a difficult thing to achieve beginning with AM3+ up until AM5 (or some AM4 to a lesser extent if counting the used market).

Or is it more about the likes of Intel's management engine and AMD's use of ARM TrustZone?

[athenian200]

I just remembered how FoxClone's stand-alone bootable Linux ISO actually includes Pale Moon as its browser of choice due to Pale Moon having the smallest file size of any Linux browser known that is able to navigate FoxClone's website.

That use case wouldn't be affected... presumably they are building Pale Moon themselves, and if they are building it themselves rather than using our official builds, they don't have to target AVX.

Really, anyone who has the source code can still build without AVX... we're talking about moving the official baseline for our own builds, nothing else really.

[__NM64__]

Really, anyone who has the source code can still build without AVX... we're talking about moving the official baseline for our own builds, nothing else really.

So technically even Steve Pusser could if he so desired? I wonder if I should ask what his take is on the situation over in his thread... EDIT: It seems Pentium4User beat me to it.


Also, some hardware insight I wanted to mention about "Kaby Lake" Pentiums from the beginning of 2017:

As far as I'm concerned, those budget CPUs were a waste of sand and most people who bought them got screwed, and I'm sorry, but the rest of the computing world isn't going to stop going forward just because you made a bad decision and bought an Intel CPU that was limited to 2009-era Nehalem instruction sets in 2022. The newer instruction sets have existed for long enough that it's becoming a bit ridiculous to be stuck with that as a limit to what we can bake in without people complaining.

So, I guess consider it a lesson learned. Be careful of buying low-end PC parts, you never know how crippled they might be or whether they are cheap because they are missing key features that developers will take advantage of in the next couple years. Like for instance, it would be a bit like saying game developers still shouldn't require more than the amount of power used by the GT 1030 due to it being part of the 10 series, and conveniently thus still work well enough with a 560 Ti, just because something was produced more recently with that older baseline. It doesn't work that way, your budget hardware is only suitable for older stuff and is a replacement for buying used, it's not meant to last.

At least with the popular G4560 and other Kaby Lake-derieved 2core/4thread Pentiums, that was the generation where even the i3 was still 2core/4thread, so you had to spend over double the price (a little below $200 USD) on the CPU in order to get more than the 2core/4thread offered by the likes of a $70 G4560 (or $~80 G4600 if you wanted the faster variant of integrated graphics). The only thing the i3 offered that generation was in fact AVX other than a stupid-expensive ~$200 i3 model that was unlocked for overclocking, and I'm not sure any sane person could argue to spend like double the price just to get AVX

It may be worth noting that the G4560 coincided with a somewhat popular time for PC gaming coming off the back of the first "crash" of crypto, recent launches of the king-for-value RX 470/480 and GTX 1060, and the PS4/XB1 getting a bit long in the tooth; for context the next crypto bubble hadn't started and Ryzen was barely even a thing yet (but even then, AM4 definitely had early teething issues until at least Ryzen 2000).

[Moonchild]

I hate to disappoint people but if you're buying extreme budget CPUs or extremely low-power CPUs (from a performance perspective you're likely getting something similar) you're unfortunately also going to land on very limited support.
Keep in mind that a modern web browser is not unlike a modern game in what it is tasked to do. You can't expect those CPUs to be supported by modern games, either.
As Athenian said in that case you get what you paid for. If you really couldn't/didn't want to spend $10 more on a processor when you bought it and expect to get more than about 3 years of life and support out of it, you're going to be disappointed as those SKUs were never intended for full-fledged desktop use or prolonged usage.

We have to draw the line somewhere and we're drawing it at AVX support and mainstream desktop CPUs.
I'll still do my best to make a transition as good as I can, e.g. by requiring a special flag to be passed through that AVX is supported when updates are requested, but we really do need to stop holding everyone else back on seriously outmoded binaries.

[RealityRipple]

If non-AVX building continues, I don't think you should have to be the one to deal with it MC - you've got plenty on your plate as it is. Anyone with a "legacy" CPU got a system capable of building Win64 that could step up?

[__NM64__]

I also can't help but wonder if I were aware of this poll that, if I had cast my single vote for "Keep it as-is (SSE2 or later)", resulting in a tie between that and the AVX option, would make a difference. While I literally use Pale Moon every single day, I'm by no means a heavy user of the forum and most of the time just look at the "Announcements" sub-forum (which is why I suddenly showed up here today since that's when the AVX issue was first ever mentioned there)—outside of that, the last time I did something on the forum was back in November.

And speaking of the announcement post, I can recommend the program CPU-X on the Linux side of things for determining what instructions your CPU supports (it's basically a Linux clone of CPU-Z):

• https://github.com/TheTumultuousUnicornOfDarkness/CPU-X

Speaking of Linux, another thought I had is that we already have both GTK2 and GTK3 builds of Pale Moon on Linux, so why can't the GTK2 build be as-is with SSE2 while it's the GTK3 build that requires AVX (or vice-versa I suppose—whichever makes the most sense).? Heck maybe even doing the same for the FreeBSD builds (I have never used FreeBSD so I have absolutely zero idea if that would even make any practical sense).

Keep in mind that a modern web browser is not unlike a modern game in what it is tasked to do. You can't expect those CPUs to be supported by modern games, either.

Modern games have been struggling with only 4 CPU threads for around 5 years now—this was particularly noticeable with Zen1 where the Ryzen 1600 competed well against the i5-7400 with the i5 doing worse and worse with newer and newer games AAA, and that was a CPU with 4 full-fat cores rather than 2core/4thread.

And since modern versions of Windows have who knows what sort of shenanigans going on in the background of questionable benefit to the user (more likely of benefit to Microsoft), even normal day-to-day basic desktop and web use can need more CPU threads than, say, a decade ago.

Which is why I focused my attention on Linux, where performance requirements for everyday use aren't really any different than that similar decade-ago time-frame. Farthermore, as CPUs have gained more and more cores and threads, their benefit became ever more questionable for more basic browsing & email PCs since the lower-end CPUs are primarily differentiated on thread count rather than raw single-threaded performance—you would be quite hard pressed to tell the difference between a 2core/4thread Pentium G4560 and a 10core/20threat i9-10900K considering they're both derived from the Skylake architecture with basically identical IPC save for Meltdown mitigations and cache size differences (in fact this might be a big reason why AMD basically doesn't make $100 CPUs anymore using their newest architectures, instead relying on previous gen lower-binned chips for that market instead?).

If you really couldn't/didn't want to spend $10 more on a processor when you bought it and expect to get more than about 3 years of life and support out of it,

The price jump from a Pentium to an i3 with integrated graphics back in the DDR4 era was more like $50 which, when your CPU is around $70, is way closer to double than $10 more. I don't know if you've ever built a PC yourself, but it's around $200 to $300 on the essential parts of a non-workstation PC or non-AAA-gaming PC, that being CPU+motherboard and maybe RAM since the rest are almost always re-usable between PC builds even from a decade ago (case, power supply, storage, mouse & keyboard, display, even a discrete graphics card if you had one), so stepping up to a higher-end CPU can easily make your total cost be like 50% to 100% more, and it was much wiser to put any such money towards an SSD (even higher-end pre-built PCs still came without them in the mid to late 2010s, like my uncle's i7-6700 non-K pre-built).

[athenian200]

Another thought I had: We already have both GTK2 and GTK3 builds of Pale Moon on Linux, so why can't the GTK2 build be as-is with SSE2 while it's the GTK3 build that requires AVX (or vice-versa I suppose—whichever makes the most sense).? Heck maybe even doing the same for the FreeBSD builds (I have never used FreeBSD so I have absolutely zero idea if that would even make any practical sense).

This was already suggested earlier in the thread... here is MC's response.

Forcing people to change their look&feel? I'm sure GTK3 works just fine on older hardware so if people use and prefer GTK3 they would have to change to a GTK2 version... Also, many people on new hardware would choose to use GTK2 because it just looks better, regardless of its age. And once again it would splinter/complicate people's choice for the browser. It's much easier to get across that "if you are on hardware X, you need a community-built version" than "If X and Y then you use Z, unless you want it to look like Q then you have to build yourself"
Not sure that would be a good compromise, at all.

[__NM64__]

This was already suggested earlier in the thread... here is MC's response.

Forcing people to change their look&feel?

Perhaps my Linux inexperience is showing but, as I sort of alluded to in the Steve Pusser builds thread, the visual difference between the two seems to be pretty darned minor at least on Linux Mint to the point that I've always sort of not known which to use when booting the Mint live ISO in VirtualBox as an easy way to check for a bug in a fresh unmodified copy of Pale Moon (this method also makes for great reproducibility and furthermore can record a video for any bug reports).

Does this mean that it makes a bigger difference on other distros and/or desktop environments, and it's just Cinnamon and Xfce where there's barely a visual difference?

[Drugwash]

Does this mean that it makes a bigger difference on other distros and/or desktop environments, and it's just Cinnamon and Xfce where there's barely a visual difference?

My opinion, if I'm allowed to one, is that the most that matters is the current system theme and the current Pale Moon theme - if it's not the default one.

Of course, I'm on Mint Cinnamon too, but got my own modded theme which makes it look like Windows 7, and with the Compact Moon theme in Pale Moon it really makes no difference whatsoever whether it's Gtk2 or Gtk3. Thing is, the Gtk2 part of the system theme should match as close as possible the Gtk3 part otherwise differences could be notable to some degree.

On older systems Gtk2 is still in use, and even on newer ones is still a thing. So it could be carried on for quite a while yet I'd say, if resources allow it.

I for one tried to compile Pale Moon myself, but only had free space on an external NTFS drive at the time, and the code didn't like it, hard links wouldn't work, so I abandoned the idea. On system partiton - the only one formatted in ext4 - I can barely squeeze 1GB of free space every now and then so that Dropbox could perform its sync, but generally it often goes below 500MB. So self-compilation is kinda out of the question for me.

[athenian200]

Perhaps my Linux inexperience is showing but, as I sort of alluded to in the Steve Pusser builds thread, the visual difference between the two seems to be pretty darned minor at least on Linux Mint to the point that I've always sort of not known what to pick when spinning up a live ISO in a VM to check for a bug in a fresh unmodified copy of Pale Moon.

Does this mean that it makes a bigger difference on other distros and/or desktop environments, and it's just Cinnamon and Xfce where there's barely a visual difference?

I suspect so. To my eyes, GTK3 looks absolutely fine as long as you use the default desktop theme, like Menta with MATE or Adwaita with GNOME 3. The problem comes when people use GTK3 with some obscure desktop theme that has odd metrics for textboxes and such, and some distros unfortunately default to such themes. That's when GTK3 looks awful, and it looks worst when you pair these obscure GTK3 themes with older browser themes that assume Linux is using GTK2. Though honestly, I would argue that people should be updating the old themes to look better on GTK3 anyway, but that isn't happening and that's why we're stuck providing GTK2 builds.

[__NM64__]

I just realized that, the last time we had a single-question poll/survey, there were almost 1000 responses and I believe it was a forum-wide announcement or something? All I know is that even I with my infrequent visits to the forum participated that time:

• viewtopic.php?f=5&t=27682

But this poll has a mere 5% of the amount of votes by comparison, and I certainly never saw any headers or the like for this poll leading me to be unaware until the announcement thread by when the poll was already closed for votes.


(I could see the argument that the previous survey/poll was more about the user-facing experience while this is just under-the-hood stuff that won't change what the user actually sees, but my expertise is hardware and therefore hardware compatibility is extremely front-and-center for me since I've used DIY PCs from mostly hand-me-down parts for many many years now, a large amount from a PC gamer friend that seemed to have an infatuation with mid to late 2000's AMD hardware aka socket 939 to AM3 non-plus; and my G3258 was to replace straight-up broken hardware via a MicroCenter bundle for the CPU+Z97 motherboard for $100 which CPU-wise, especially with the 4.5GHz overclock my chips can manage, would have ran circles around the similarly-priced dual-core AMD A4-7400K I was originally looking at...which ironically would have supported AVX)

[Moonchild]

The poll was just to gauge a broad interest by the people wanting to participate in this discussion, not to let it determine any particular outcome. I would have liked to see more voters but the discussion itself and the points raised (some very good ones by everyone involved!) were more important than the initial poll to help evaluate our options and direction.

[back2themoon]

I would have liked to see more voters...

Perhaps the time window was too small. Don't know if there's a default setting for these polls, but a minimum of 2-3 weeks seems reasonable.

[Mike_Walsh]

Interesting observations here.....especially about newer CPUs with (apparently) limited instruction sets.

I run a Pentium 'Gold' G5400 desktop CPU in an HP Pavilion mid-tower. This rig was purchased in 2020; the CPU dates from mid 2018. This doesn't have AVX, but does have SSE 4.2 and vT-X for virtualization.

The Pale Moon browser has for long enough been the default browser in most builds of 'Puppy' Linux over the last several years.....and Puppy's "mission" has always been to keep elderly hardware useful. We've plumped for Pale Moon because it's lightweight yet still blazingly fast on most older hardware.....and is up-to-date enough to support the modern web.

It seems rather arbitrary to just decide "Right; we're only going to support machines with expensive hardware". It doesn't seem fair to penalise those who often cannot afford newer hardware - for whatever reason - and the majority of our members fall into this category.....usually through no choice of their own. Internet access has become not just a necessity these days, it almost falls under the category of a human RIGHT.

Myself, as a Puppy forum moderator, I see both sides of the argument; some few Puppians always go for the very newest hardware, but most are having to make do with hand-me-downs, etc. In my case, the Pavilion was the first modern machine I've run for a very long time.....yet at the same time, I refuse to bankrupt myself by going for top-end gear; I don't see the sense in it. I've got other stuff I need to spend my limited income on that is way more important.....like keeping a roof over my head, clothes on my back & food in my belly.

Perhaps Pale Moon is gearing-up for being a 'specialist', niche browser? As far as I'm aware, no other browser on the market has decided to follow this particular path. Not yet, anyway.....


Mike.

[Moonchild]

It seems rather arbitrary to just decide "Right; we're only going to support machines with expensive hardware". It doesn't seem fair to penalise those who often cannot afford newer hardware

...yet, it does seem fair to you to penalize every user who isn't running "elderly hardware" or have chosen to explicitly run non-standard cut-down/ULP versions of CPUs? Take a step back and look at the big picture, Mike.

Though, as I've already explained before about this intended change: if community builds for specific distributions would generally target specific less capable hardware, then those communities can of course continue to build their specific binary distributions with different optimizations (e.g. Solaris/Illumos would be in the same boat) provided a mention is made that there is this difference (as a courtesy to the user). I will make a more explicit mention of this in the redist license when I update it for this intended change.