Proposal to drop 32-bit Ubuntu GNOME support after 18.04 LTS

[Jeremy Bicha]

On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 1:50 PM, Emblem Parade <emblemparade at gmail.com> wrote:
> Is support for 32bits seriously stressing the dev/QA resources of the small
> Ubuntu GNOME team?

I believe the only time the Ubuntu GNOME contributors use 32-bit
Ubuntu GNOME is for testing the milestone iso releases. Supporting
both 32-bit and 64-bit releases is basically double the work at that
time. Generally, there are only 3 people who have been testing those
iso's in the past 11 months: Tim, Lance and me. Tim and Lance haven't
been able to help out as much the past few months. All 3 of us support
this proposal to drop the 32-bit images.

But it's not just about whether someone will volunteer now to test the
32-bit iso's. The question is whether it's worth all of that work. The
number of 32-bit only users is dropping pretty quickly. Last year, an
OMG!Ubuntu! poll [1] indicated that less than 10% of respondents use
32-bit Ubuntu. That number will continue to decline as more people
realize that it won't hurt them to run 64-bit Ubuntu.

By the way, this was proposed 9 months ago [2] and there was only one
reply (and it was favorable). The proposal then was an immediate end
to 32-bit support, but the Ubuntu GNOME team is instead handling this
more carefully (and slowly) with advance warning.

[1] http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2016/09/use-ubuntu-32bit-64bit-poll
[2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-gnome/2016-July/004072.html

Thanks,
Jeremy