12.04 LTS: 64-bit desktop by default?

[Scott Ritchie]

On 4/16/12 9:25 AM, Steve Langasek wrote:
> Hi Mike,
>
> On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 11:09:19AM -0400, Michael Terry wrote:
>> On 16/04/12 02:03, Steve Langasek wrote:
>>> And regardless of which we decide to use as the default, both of amd64 and
>>> i386 will continue to be supported architectures for the length of 12.04 LTS
>>> and will remain available for download.
>
>> There seems to be an unstated assumption that the default
>> recommended architecture needs to stay the same throughout the
>> lifecycle of 12.04 LTS.  Is that true?
>
> I don't see us making such a change for a point release.  First, we don't
> typically get CDs pressed of point releases; second, there is going to be
> some confusion on the part of users about this change, and I think we can
> better mitigate that if changing it as part of .0 instead of as a point
> release.
>
>> If we end up deciding to stick with i386 for now to better support
>> common hardware, this question will still be re-evaluated for a
>> future release.  And when it changes, we could go back and change
>> the default download link and what is installed on the store USB
>> sticks for 12.04 LTS.
>
> We could, but I'm pretty sure it's not worth it at that point.
>

Relatedly, I'm worried about what happens when these 12.04 users upgrade 
to 14.04.  It would be really unfortunate to have them still on 32 bit 
by that point.

Unless, of course, we have ambitions of supporting automatic 
cross-architecture upgrades by then.

Thanks,
Scott Ritchie