On Wed, May 31, 2023 at 12:51:06AM +0200, Diederik de Haas wrote:
> While it may be a no-brainer for a person with a $/€ 1000 a month residual
> income to just buy new hardware whenever they feel like it, that is not the
> case for everyone.
[...]
> It's absolutely true that modern machines are more energy efficient. What is
> also true is that the production of new devices has a big environmental
> impact.
20+ year old machines are typically more power hungry, more expensive,
less performant, and less reliable than an up-to-date raspberry pi. If
you want to support people who can't afford shiny new hardware, I think
pointing them to raspberry pi-class hardware is a better idea than
trying to recycle old hardware. As such, I don't think "but old hardware
is still used" is a very good argument for keeping i386 around.
If they can afford 10 year old hardware, the situation is different; but
no 10 year old hardware that is worth recycling does not support x86-64.
I'm not saying we shouldn't support old hardware at all -- I fought for
a long time to keep m68k hardware a supported architecture in Debian --
but this is not the best argument for it, IMO.
Thanks,
--
w@uter.{be,co.za}
wouter@{grep.be,fosdem.org,debian.org}
I will have a Tin-Actinium-Potassium mixture, thanks.
