[lubuntu-devel] State of PPC

[Walter Lapchynski]

As you can see from the page on [PPC][1], the architecture has only
community support from Ubuntu. Lubuntu has been trying as much as we can to
support this, but the fact of the matter is that we have no developers on
our team that can actually help with PPC bugs.

The best you can hope for is that kernel developers (mostly, the issue is
with drivers) might have some interest in fixing bugs. However, with only
community support, that's unlikely. Most of the focus on PPC has been on
the server side of things, where graphics just don't come into play.

My estimation of things is that Lubuntu on PPC mostly works, given a few
caveats. All we need to do to release PPC is for all of the test cases to
be completed successfully (regardless of whether or not there are bugs) and
that marked on the QA tracker for the final testing of each milestone. If
we don't have that done, Canonical will not let us release it.

PPC was what brought me originally to Lubuntu, so there's a special place
for it in my heart. Having an OS make that old hardware work was very
refreshing and introduced me to the real power and mission of Lubuntu.

However, I haven't ran PPC in a long, long time. That being said, I'm not
of much help. We rely on the community of users to help out. When I don't
see testing happening in the community, it makes me think that I'm not the
only one that's neglected their PPC machines.

The reality of the situation is that there has been much talk throughout
the Ubuntu community over the past few years about getting rid of i386. If
that happens, I can't imagine that Canonical keeping PPC. With that in
mind, I think the end of PPC Lubuntu is coming regardless of what our
feelings are.

Furthermore, the Lubuntu Team is a small one and we often lack the capacity
to do the things that we need to do. PPC is just stretching us even
thinner, and into an area few of us really have the experience, knowledge,
resources, or time to deal with.

That said, I'm inclined to suggest we start the process of removing PPC. We
managed to release an LTS, which is the only version we even bother with
PPC on. All we would need to do is ensure that all the point releases for
Trusty and Xenial get published. That would put us out until about August
2018.

I think ultimately this will be better for the team. Most importantly,
though, I think it will be better for the PPC users that I fear we can't
really support and who we often leave with a frustrated experience.

What do you think?

[1]: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPC
-- 
@wxl | http://polka.bike
Lubuntu Release Manager & Head of QA
Ubuntu PPC Point of Contact
Ubuntu Oregon LoCo Team Leader
Ubuntu Membership Board & LoCo Council Member
Eugene Unix & GNU/Linux User Group Co-Organizer
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