Dropping i386 non-PAE as a supported kernel flavour in Precise Pangolin

[Dotan Cohen]

On Thu, Nov 10, 2011 at 17:14, Tim Gardner <tim.gardner at canonical.com> wrote:
> As far as I can tell there hasn't been a mass produced non-PAE cpu in over 5
> years that we (as a distro) care about. The consumer grade electronics
> lifecycle is _well_ below 5 years.

Most people that I know are using 3-5 year old hardware, and I would
say that the 5-8 year hardware is more common than 0-3 year old
hardware. Maybe we have less of a wasteful culture than those who
replace their entire desktops every <5 years, but even in instances
where a user _does_ replace his hardware so often, what becomes of
that hardware? I'll tell you: it becomes some relative's computer. Or
some neighbour's.

In fact, I pretty much maintain the computers of most of the 28
households in my building, and more than half are running some sub
1gHz Pentium 3 or such, with 256 MB of RAM. These are not "computer
enthusiasts" but rather normal people who make do with Kubuntu or XP
and browse Facebook and Picasa online. These people do not feel that
they are missing anything and have no need to upgrade.

-- 
Dotan Cohen

http://gibberish.co.il
http://what-is-what.com