[continuing top posting; re-sending with less recipients to allow
posting to the lubuntu mailing lists]
Hi everybody,
1. I think that we should keep making the current 32-bit versions alias
'i386' (with i686 kernels) of Lubuntu, Ubuntu Server, mini.iso and the
other flavours that want to keep it.
I agree with Aere's arguments (near the end of this mail).
2. I can understand and accept that PowerPC support will end.
Best regards
Nio
Den 2016-11-16 kl. 23:58, skrev Walter Lapchynski:
Aere: I think what Ubuntu is discussing is removing i386/x86/32-bit,
i.e. going all amd64/x64/64-bit. And yes, it would very negatively
impact many Lubuntu users as well as the goals of the Lubuntu project as
a whole.
Unfortunately, I was not able to make it to the session. For those of us
in the same boat, here's some links:
* YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXzYG4d7poQ
* EtherPad: http://pad.ubuntu.com/uos-1611-architecture-discussions
* IRC: https://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2016/11/16/%23ubuntu-uos-core.html#t14:55
The majority of this conversation concerned PPC. I think the long answer
is there are some rather annoying endian bugs and a yaboot issue that no
one currently supporting PPC (Lubuntu, Ubuntu MATE, Ubuntu Server) has
the resources to deal with. Not to mention upstream. I'll let those
leading the discussion (cc'd) confirm this, but it sounds like by when
support for existing PPC releases end, it will be time to stop providing
any sort of PPC images.
As far as my perspective is concerned, I'm perfectly happy with dropping
PPC. It makes me sad. PPC brought me to the Lubuntu community. However,
it becomes increasingly harder to make PPC users happy. The successes
that we have had in recent times are largely by accident. Neither
Lubuntu nor Ubuntu MATE have the resources to support PPC. It does sound
like Ubuntu Server will be dropping PPC. I think it only makes sense for
us to follow suit.
Apparently, there are plans in place to evaluate the health of the PPC
port during the Z cycle and so a decision on removing PPC from the
archives will likely come in 6 months time. Even then, it sounds like
that's going to be a temporary delay to PPC's inevitable removal.
Turning to x86, one of the things that was brought up in this discussion
was limited support for x86 among browsers. Chrome (and yes, upstream
Chromium) dropped support for it entirely. Firefox continues to provide
x86 support though there is [some talk][1] about removing support for
some CPU extensions which could affect a small subset of x86 users.
Probably not a big issue. Suffice it to say, this seems to be a moot issue.
However, there was some discussion about the fact that since the vast
majority of new machines are x86_64, much in the way of development and
QA (even upstream) has been done on x86_64, and as such x86 bugs are
popping up that were not otherwise being noticed.
Ubuntu has moved x86 download links to alternate downloads, so you have
to actually hunt for them. Apparently, there's not a lot of backlash on
this. Of course, we all know Unity isn't exactly all that usable on
these vintage of machines.
One thing I'm happy to hear is that no one's talking about removing x86
outside of Ubuntu Desktop and Server (nothing definitive yet). It
doesn't sound like it's going to be removed from the archives. The
feeling appears that it's well supported upstream. That said, it's on
the shoulders of flavors to decide on what to do.
[1]: https://chuttenblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/10/sse2-support-in-firefox-users/
On Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 9:30 AM, Aere Greenway
<a...@dvorak-keyboards.com <mailto:a...@dvorak-keyboards.com>> wrote:
On 11/16/2016 05:45 AM, Julien Lavergne wrote:
2016-11-14 21:36 GMT+01:00 Walter Lapchynski <w...@ubuntu.com
<mailto:w...@ubuntu.com>>:
It should be pointed out that this discussion is not only
about PPC but it's
also about i386. Since i386 is a major target of Lubuntu, I
would advise
attendance.
I'm woking this day, so I will not be able to attempt :-(
However, dropping i386 will be a very bad signal for our users. It
will be difficult to maintain the fact that Lubuntu is for old
computers if this kind of support is dropped ...
Regards,
Julien Lavergne
Walter & Julien:
What is meant by the proposal of "dropping i386"?
Does it mean dropping all 32-bit machines (as 'i386' in Debian
packages would imply)?
If so, I think that would be a very extreme, draconian thing to do.
In my particular case, it would mean that seven of the machines in
my test-bed would have to be consigned to the junk-heap.
If it affects me this drastically, I'm sure it will negatively
impact a lot of other users.
Even if a machine can run 64-bit, if it doesn't have a lot of
memory, I will use the i386 version of the OS, because it uses the
limited memory better, and requires measurably less memory for the OS.
If, on the other hand, 'dropping i386' means removing support for
Intel-based machines that don't have support of certain
machine-instructions, it would be less of an impact (probably two
machines in my test-bed to be junked), but I would also loose the
ability to test with minimum machines because of that.
I am unable to test with virtual box machines because virtual box
introduces too much latency (delay between pressing a key and
hearing the sound).
--
Sincerely,
Aere
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