Installation Media and supportability of i386 in 18.04 LTS Re: Ubuntu Desktop on i386

[Charl Wentzel]

On 01/07/2016 21:05, Bryan Quigley wrote:
> Can you elaborate on what specific systems you are purchasing today
> that use 32-bit x86 (I believe the only vendors ever were AMD, Intel
> and VIA)?
The chipsets are mostly AMD and Intel as you've stated.  The vendor I 
purchase from mostly is iEi.  They have a huge variety of form factors 
and chipsets, mostly AMD and Intel.  Popular 32-bit systems include 
Intel Atom and AMD Geode.
I have used some weird ones like the eBox that uses the DM&P Vortex86DX 
CPU, but you can no longer run Ubuntu on this anyway, because the 
architecture is too old.
> Also what is your usual expected EOL for these systems?
I'll have to find out about EOL, but they'll continue to produce the 
systems for as long as the chips are available.  So I guess the question 
is rather for how much longer AMD and Intel will produce 32-bit chipsets.
In the field these systems can keep running for 10+ years even in harsh 
environments because they are designed for industrial conditions.  
However, once installed the operating system is seldom upgraded as its 
usually pretty hard to get to the devices and upgrades often bring 
unwanted problems, e.g. incompatibilities, removed packages, dropped 
support for devices or changes to the file system structure. So I only 
use LTS editions and allow for security updates, at least that provides 
3-5 years of OS security.

Dropped support for older architectures and hardware is a problem I run 
into more and more.  Even things like dropping support for the 
alternative install CD created problems for me.  I have considered 
switching to another flavor of Linux that still supports older 
architectures, but the convenience of Ubuntu makes it hard to switch.  
The new Snappy packages might make life a little easier again, but I 
haven't tried it yet.  Fortunately, embedded systems seldom require GUI 
front-ends and web interfaces are preferred, so Server Edition still 
provides everything I need.

Please don't forget the Edubuntu projects.  Dropping support for 32-bit 
PCs could severely affect many of these community upliftment projects.

Regards
Charl
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