[RFC] Drop Non-smp PowerPC Kernel Flavor

[Tim Gardner]

On 03/14/2012 11:00 AM, Colin Watson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 14, 2012 at 09:52:01AM -0700, Leann Ogasawara wrote:
>> The Ubuntu Kernel Team has been evaluating some of the current
>> maintenance burdens for the upcoming Precise Pangolin 12.04 LTS release.
>> One area which would reduce the maintenance costs would be to drop the
>> non-smp PowerPC kernel flavor.  There are currently three PowerPC
>> flavors:
>
> Making the associated installer changes shouldn't be a big deal, but I
> suggest you ask the Xubuntu and Lubuntu communities about this since a
> good proportion of powerpc users are there.
>
>>   * non-smp (linux-image-powerpc)
>>   * smp (linux-image-powerpc-smp)
>>   * smp-64 (linux-image-powerpc64-smp)
>
> It's not clear to me whether it would make more sense to drop -powerpc
> or -powerpc-smp.  My memory is that -powerpc-smp was significantly less
> used and would be a better candidate for removal.  Do you have notes on
> which hardware is covered by -powerpc-smp that can't use -powerpc64-smp?
>

We consulted Jeremy Kerr about this. He says that an SMP kernel will run 
on all 32 bit powerpc platforms, including non-SMP. I don't recall 
discussing if the 64 bit SMP kernel would run on all SMP capable 
hardware. That combination is not possible on all x86 platforms, so I 
was likely biased.

rtg
-- 
Tim Gardner tim.gardner at canonical.com