Proposal: Let's drop i386

[Brian Murray]

On Wed, May 09, 2018 at 04:07:23PM -0400, Bryan Quigley wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Less and less non-amd64-compatible i386 hardware is available for consumers
> to buy today from anything but computer part recycling centers. The last of
> these machines were manufactured over a decade ago, and support from
> an increasing
> number of upstream projects has ended.
> 
> Ubuntu and flavors just completed the 18.04 release cycle. This released
> version will either be supported until 2021 or 2023, depending on the
> product, team, and willingness to support it. At that point in time, the
> majority of these machines are approaching two decades old.
> 
> >>Previous 2016 thread: And in 2018, the question will come if we can
> effectively provide security support on i386.
> We can't.  Machines running i386 Ubuntu which are capable of running amd64
> Ubuntu are vulnerable to the critical Meltdown vulnerability where they
> wouldn't be if they were running amd64. (Some actual i386 hardware simply
> isn't vulnerable, but some is).
> 
> We still have a relatively high number if i386 downloads but that doesn't
> mean users machines are not capable of amd64. For the flavors remaining
> today on i386 here are some i386 to amd64 ratios for 18.04:
> 
> Lubuntu cdimage - 0.87
> Lubuntu tracker - 0.64
> Lubuntu error (pcmanfm) - 0.11
> Xubuntu cdimage - 0.49
> Xubuntu tracker -  0.30
> Xubuntu error (thunar) - 0.10
> Kylin tracker - 0.30
> Kylin error (engrampa) - 0.10
> Kubuntu cdimage - 0.14
> Kubuntu tracker - 0.12
> Kubuntu error (kinit) - 0.07
> 
> The data retrieved from cdimage is for a limited time period on May 7th. All
> cdimage statistics included many hundreds to thousands of downloads (except
> Ubuntu Kylin due to it using it's own CDN, so not being included here). The
> torrent tracker results are available here: http://torrent.ubuntu.com:6969/
> .
> The error tracker statistics come from comparing top bugs shared between
> i386 and amd64 over last week. Bugs that affect multiple flavors are not
> included.
> It's not fully understood why there is a large discrepancy between the
> error tracker and other sources - but it's possible apport doesn't work as
> well in low memory.

Could you elaborate on the methodology you used to create these Error
Tracker statistics?

I'm not certain engrampa was a representative choice given that it is
also part of the xubuntu-desktop and ubuntu-mate-desktop tasks.

--
Brian Murray