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

[Dimitri John Ledkov]

Hello,

On 28 June 2016 at 21:08, Seth Arnold <seth.arnold at canonical.com> wrote:
>> 18.04 LTS:
>> * continue to provide i386 port to run legacy applications on amd64
>> * stop producing i386 d-i / netboot installer
>> * stop producing i386 kernel
>> * stop producing i386 cloud-images
>> * stop producing i386 ubuntu-desktop.iso
>> * stop producing i386 ubuntu-server.iso
>>
>> 18.10+:
>> * Stop providing i386 port
>> * Run legacy i386 only application in snaps / containers / virtual machines
>
> I'm afraid this proposal may strand some current i386 users on a release
> with no lifetime to it.
>
> 16.04's 32 bit support has a five-year lifespan. We may not be able to
> support the whole thing for the full five years but it should mostly work.
>
> But if we release 16.10, 17.04, 17.10 i386, we're basically encouraging
> users to install them and upgrade them and then find out in mid-2018 that
> they've reached the end of their OS life and no way back to the safety of
> 16.04 LTS.

My current hunch is like this at the moment:

- 18.04 to still have an i386 port in the archive, and be upgradable to.

- 18.04 not having desktop/server install media (however maybe even
releases before that)

- 18.04 has "ubuntu-desktop" but without security support

- 18.04 on i386 having a limited security support, driven only by
particular products if any are on the support timeline at the time

-- 
Regards,

Dimitri.