What is the latest version of Fedora that an Athlon XP 3000plus can run?

asked 2019-03-13 12:37:06 -0600

clh333
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I have been using Red Hat Fedora since Version 7 and am now on Fedora 28 on a dual-boot machine. A few years ago I loaded another machine with Fedora 21, which was current at the time, and recently I revisited that machine. Of course support has expired for Fedora 21 long ago and so I tried to see if I could run the current version, Fedora 29.

The short answer is that I can't: I downloaded two "live" ISOs and burned DVDs of KDE and also LXDE. Each halted execution after noting several processor errors; the machine had to be reset.

This has me wondering: What is the most recent version of Fedora, either KDE or Gnome desktop, that can run on this antique (Y2K, +/-) and slow (333 MHz) processor? (Abit 7 PCI + AGP motherboard, VIA chipset, 3 GB memory)

-CH-

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answered 2019-03-13 16:52:10 -0600

clh333
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Thank you for your reply. I understand that the Athlon 3000+ processor in this machine supports MMX and SSE but not SSE2. Further, that the lack of SSE2 support in this processor presents a difficulty in that it limits or prevents use of modern OSs, browsers and anti-virus software, all of which depend on SSE2.

From the thread [1] above I gather that the decision to support only SSE2-capable processors was made around July of 2016. That would suggest that perhaps Fedora 25 was the first to incorporate that policy. The policy decision must have been made sometime between 12/9/2014 when Fedora 21 was released and 10/30/2018 when Fedora 29 was released, as Fedora 21 runs on my old machine without complaint.

I understand all too well the reasons for avoiding forking the code. I am simply asking in which version did the change become effective?

-CH-