[ubuntu-studio-devel] i386 architecture will be dropped starting with eoan (Ubuntu 19.10)

[lukefromdc at hushmail.com]

That may be practical in the US and Europe, but far less practical for
say, an activist media maker in a Rio favela opposing Bolsonaro's
efforts to "cleanse" the city of the poor. S/he might be limited to
the hardware on hand, and an upgrade requirement will be translated
into a change distro or don't update software requirement. Not
everyone has even a single penny to spend on replacing equipment that
may still function as it did when new. Just because fat-pig ad
supported websites full of tracking and fingerprinting scripts have
moved on doesn't mean everyone has to.

On 6/27/2019 at 10:44 PM, "Kris Komar"  wrote:It’s time to move on.
Having 1GB of RAM is no longer acceptable in computing today. We need
to move forward. You could have argued that point in 2010 to some
success but it’s 2019. 2019! They will need to upgrade. 

On Jun 21, 2019, at 9:33 AM, Luigino Bracci  wrote:

I also disagree with this decision. In my country, there is A LOT of
hardware (minilaptops, old computers) with just 1 GB of RAM; those
computers have 64-bit CPUs, but we recommend installing 32-bit distros
on them, because the performance of a 64-bit distribution in 1 GB of
RAM is disappointing; it's too slow because applications compiled for
64-bit eat more memory. Most people just can't pay the RAM upgrade to
2 GB or 4 GB (that upgrade costs one month of sallary in many
countries). 

GNU/Linux is the natural option in developing countries. The
government of my country gave 2,6 millions of minilaptops to children
in the last 8 years, all with 1 GB of RAM and a Debian-based 32-bit
Linux distro.
I apologize for the rudeness of what I'm going to say, but stop
creating 32-bit distributions is a decision that seems taken by people
living in New York, having computers with 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB SSDs,
and believing that the rest of the world lives like them.
Regards.

El vie., 21 de jun. de 2019 a la(s) 10:53, Erich Eickmeyer
(erich at ericheickmeyer.com) escribió:
Hello Steve,
 >Last year, the Ubuntu developer community considered the question of
 whether
 >to continue carrying forward the i386 architecture in the Ubuntu
 archive for
 >future releases.[1]  The discussion at the time was inconclusive,
but in
 >light of the strong possibility that we might not include i386 as a
release
 >architecture in 20.04 LTS, we took the proactive step to disable
upgrades
 >from 18.04 to 18.10 for i386 systems[2], to avoid accidentally
stranding
 >users on an interim release with 9 months of support instead of
letting
 them
 >continue to run Ubuntu 18.04 LTS with its 5 years of standard
support.
 >
 >In February of this year, I also posted to communicate the timeline
in
 which
 >we would take a final decision about i386 support in 20.04 LTS[3],
namely,
 >that we would decide in the middle of 2019.
 >
 >The middle of 2019 has now arrived.   The Ubuntu engineering team
has
 >reviewed the facts before us and concluded that we should not
continue to
 >carry i386 forward as an architecture.   Consequently, i386 will not
be
 >included as an architecture for the 19.10 release, and we will
shortly
 begin
 >the process of disabling it for the eoan series across Ubuntu
 >infrastructure.
 >
 >While this means we will not provide 32-bit builds of new upstream
versions
 >of libraries, there are a number of ways that 32-bit applications
can
 >continue to be made available to users of later Ubuntu releases, as
 detailed
 >in [4].   We will be working to polish the 32-bit support story over
the
 >course of the 19.10 development cycle.  To follow the evolution of
this
 >support, you can participate in the discourse thread at [5].
 >
 >[1]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2018-May/040310.html
 >[2]
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/1:18.10.10
 >[3]
 https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2019-February/040598.html
 >[4]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2018-May/040348.html
 >[5]
 https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/i386-architecture-will-be-dropped-starting-with-eoan-ubuntu-19-10/11263/2
 It took me a while to reach this decision, but I believe my response
is
 in order.
 I really wish the flavor leads had been consulted prior to this
decision
 being made. You yourself even sponsored a package back in March that
is
 directly affected by this decision.
 One of the biggest features of Carla being in the repositories is
that
 it allows a WINE Bridge for Windows-based VST plugins, the vast
majority
 of which are STILL compiled in 32-bit. Without 32-bit support, this
 feature is dead. This makes converting to Ubuntu Studio from Windows
 especially hard on those who rely on Windows VST plugins, the vast
 majority for which there is no Linux alternative. If this WINE bridge
 disappears due to this decision, so does a large part of our user
base.
 We're talking a huge chunk of professional recording studios and
artists
 that would rather not be running Windows.
 I understand this decision has been made, but with my Ubuntu Studio
 Project Leader hat on, I can say that this is an extreme disservice
to
 our user base and community. If it's possible to reconsider this
 decision at this point, I urge you to do so.
 Best regards,
 Erich Eickmeyer
 ----
 Erich Eickmeyer
 Project Leader
 Ubuntu Studio
 ubuntustudio.org
 -- 
 ubuntu-studio-devel mailing list
 ubuntu-studio-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
 Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-studio-devel
  -- 
ubuntu-devel mailing list
ubuntu-devel at lists.ubuntu.com
Modify settings or unsubscribe at:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-devel
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-studio-devel/attachments/20190628/19a44c61/attachment-0001.html>