[lubuntu-devel] Architecture EOL plans for Lubuntu

[Bryan Quigley]

On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 3:24 PM, Jan Holtman <oulik.jan at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Bryan
>
> There are a lot of older very good quality 32 bit machines around,
> especially in 3rd world countries.

Certainly true, but for many of them the power efficiency is making
them less and less a good economic decision.

> In my opinion it makes sense to keep the 32 bit distributions alive still.
> (also with Pentium M series processor non-PAE processor)
> Also it can be monitored how many 32 bit Iso's are actually still
> downloaded, that gives a good indication of what the need for these 32 bit
> versions there still is.

That reminded me that the torrent statistics are actually public.
This can give us some ballparks, but the data is obviously not
perfect*.  However it can help us get trends.

torrent name -  completed  -  downloaded -  transferred
-alternate-amd64.iso - 101 -  8 -  5.65GiB
-alternate-i386.iso - 107 -  14 -  9.87GiB
-alternate-powerpc.iso - 36 - 0 - 0B
-desktop-amd64.iso - 655 - 209  -  171.44GiB
-desktop-i386.iso - 711 -  275 -  226.39GiB
-desktop-powerpc.iso - 55 -  2 -  1.77GiB

By any metric from the site, the i386 ISO is more important than he
amd64 one!  (and that doesn't hold true for other flavors which leads
me to believe it's definitely true for Lubuntu and not some other
factor).
The powerpc and alternate cds seem like safer things to consider dropping.

Thanks!
Bryan

* And I have no idea what time period it's in.  Or what completed
means vs downloaded really.

[1] http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/

>
>
>
> Met vriendelijke groet / Best regards,
>
> Jan Holtman
>
> oulik.jan at gmail.com
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2016 at 8:36 PM, Bryan Quigley <bryan.quigley at canonical.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Lubuntu team,
>>
>> From the thread on Ubuntu-devel/discuss [1] I'm going to start
>> conversations with each flavor on what their plans are for i386 in the
>> 18.04 timeframe.  I have some survey results [2] that might help with
>> planning.
>>
>> Lubuntu also has a PowerPC port so discussing plans around that might
>> be worth while as well.
>>
>> The general ideas are either:
>> *Start Dropping i386 for Lubuntu now*
>> A. Drop Lubuntu i386 ISO for 16.10
>> B. In addition to A, also block upgrades by dropping packages from
>> i386 archive (say lxde-core).
>>
>> Some Pros:  Halves the test cases you need to go through.   Reduces
>> bandwidth usage and makes it more obvious for new users what to
>> download.  (Read other thread for some others)
>>
>> *Wait until after 18.04 and then reconsider dropping i386*
>>
>> Pros:  Maintain older hardware running Lubuntu for another 2+
>> years (up from 3 years).
>>
>> Thoughts?
>> Bryan
>>
>> * You could consider any packages that are 100% specific to the Lubuntu
>> flavor.
>>
>> [1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2016-June/039420.html
>>
>> [2] The total results for Lubuntu  (43 of the 300 responses).
>> Not surprising given that you are the most lightweight (by memory)
>> distribution, users expected to get longer use out of their machines
>> then with any other desktop flavor.
>>
>> How long do you expect this machine to last?
>> at least 1 year 4
>> at least 3 years 13
>> at least 5 years 8
>> at least 7 years or more 18
>>
>> What would be the effect if support ended... (1 is no impact, 5 is
>> significant impact)
>> April 2019 (16.04 LTS support ends here for Lubuntu - 3 year LTS)
>> 1 - 4
>> 2 - 5
>> 3 - 8
>> 4 - 7
>> 5 - 17
>>
>> April 2021
>> 1 - 11
>> 2 - 9
>> 3 - 5
>> 4 - 4
>> 5 - 12
>>
>> April 2023
>> 1 - 22
>> 2 - 4
>> 3 - 2
>> 4 - 1
>> 5 - 11
>>
>> i386 - To be clear I mean any 32-bit x86 platform (usually AMD/Intel/VIA).
>> PowerPC - Apple Macintosh G3, G4, and G5 computers, including iBooks
>> and PowerBooks as well as older IBM OpenPower 7xx machines.
>>
>> --
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>
>