Re: [PATCH v4 2/5] docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary

Aside from not supporting KVM on 32-bit hosts, the qemu-system-x86_64 binary is a proper superset of the qemu-system-i386 binary. With the 32-bit host support being deprecated, it is now also possible to deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary. With regards to 32-bit KVM support in the x86 Linux kernel, the developers confirmed that they do not need a recent qemu-system-i386 binary here: https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/Y%2ffkTs5ajFy0hP1U@google.com/ Reviewed-by: Daniel P. Berrangé <berrange(a)redhat.com&gt; Reviewed-by: Wilfred Mallawa <wilfred.mallawa(a)wdc.com&gt; Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth(a)redhat.com&gt; --- docs/about/deprecated.rst | 14 ++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 14 insertions(+) diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst index 1ca9dc33d6..c4fcc6b33c 100644 --- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst +++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst @@ -34,6 +34,20 @@ deprecating the build option and no longer defend it in CI. The ``--enable-gcov`` build option remains for analysis test case coverage. +``qemu-system-i386`` binary (since 8.0) +''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' + +The ``qemu-system-i386`` binary was mainly useful for running with KVM +on 32-bit x86 hosts, but most Linux distributions already removed their +support for 32-bit x86 kernels, so hardly anybody still needs this. The +``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary is a proper superset and can be used to +run 32-bit guests by selecting a 32-bit CPU model, including KVM support +on x86_64 hosts. Thus users are recommended to reconfigure their systems +to use the ``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary instead. If a 32-bit CPU guest +environment should be enforced, you can switch off the "long mode" CPU +flag, e.g. with ``-cpu max,lm=off``.