My opinion on Ubuntu cancelling Intel 80386/80386-clone processor support

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sun, 11 Sep 2016 13:43:32 -0400, John Moser wrote:
>There is no use dragging around a boat anchor just in case you meet
>someone who has a boat.  Someone else is already in the business of
>making and selling boat anchors.

That's entirely true. For users who don't need the user-friendliness
provided by Ubuntu there are anyway better distros available to "tune"
weak computers more easily. Anyway, for doing this much knowledge is
required. The user-friendliness of Ubuntu has got several weak points,
but its importance shouldn't be underestimated, especially, but not
only, for less educated people. The distro's name "Ubuntu" wasn't chosen
randomly. This word has got a meaning.

Apart from our different world views there still remains the trade-off.

Fair enough, there was a survey on many, if not all Ubuntu related
mailing lists about the need of 32 bit support. I forwarded this survey
to Ubuntu Studio, but didn't participate myself, since my opinion
regarding 32 bit support is ambivalent.

During this thread somebody mentioned computers somewhere in the bush.
The users of those computers had no chance to participate on the survey.

So IMHO the question is a trade-off. The Ubuntu maintainers could
support both 64 bit and 32 bit support in the past and they are still
doing it. By keeping the boats and computers in the bush in mind, is
continuing to drag around this anchor in the future still worth the
effort?

I had more tendencies to say "no" before this discussion started. During
this discussion my opinion tends more and more to think that 32 bit
support by Ubuntu still is very important. Taking no account that PAE
was dropped a while back, it starts with dropping a still wide used
computer architecture and easily could end in dropping CPU
compatibility even for 64 bit hardware. I know proprietary software for
Linux that already requires SSE3. Regarding my world view my 64 bit CPU
isn't old, but it only provides SSE2.

What is the borderline requirement for the Ubuntu user target group,
resp. who is this target group?

Regards,
Ralf