Concerned about future 32 bit server support

[Oliver Grawert]

hi,
Am Dienstag, den 08.08.2017, 17:07 +0100 schrieb David Fletcher:
> Hi all,
> 
> There was a fairly long discussion over on the Kubuntu list, about
> dropping 32 bit support.
> 
> My concern is that I have a little home built machine with a 32 bit
> Atom processor that has been running for several years and perfectly
> serves my needs for a low power headless server. Will 32 bit server
> support continue into the foreseeable future?

the discussion on the ubuntu-devel list (not sure what spilled over
into the kubuntu list from that) was mainly about install media since
there you have a high testing workload. 

there are places where 32bit support is still essential due to the fact
that 32bit binaries are slightly smaller and less ram hungry. the 32bit
archive packages will not go away in the foreseeable future ... there
is quite a user base in the cloud that uses 32bit and it is an
essential architecture in the embedded world (less power hungry
hardware, less ram hungry (and smaller) binaries).

embedded (IoT) and cloud are two declared focuses of canonical now, so
there the support wont go away. that said ... 32bit server installs on
real HW are a rather rare thing nowadays (at least where you can make
any business with them), so canonical wont invest manpower here.
there wont be any official install media (this isnt fully true either.
it is more work to remove the mini.iso builds from the debian-installer 
source than to leave it in place and not carry a delta, so these will
likely go on to exist even for i386, but wont see any official testing)

i could imagine if a team steps up to take full responsibility of
maintaining a 32bit server install as a community flavour (like
{lu,ku,xu}buntu), it wouldnt be refused ...

ciao
	oli
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