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About i386 support

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  About i386 support Victor Gamper <victor@wenzeslaus.de> - 2024-05-17 22:10 +0200
    Re: About i386 support Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org> - 2024-05-17 22:50 +0200
      Re: About i386 support rhys@neoquasar.org - 2024-05-18 03:20 +0200
        Re: About i386 support Maite Gamper <victor@wenzeslaus.de> - 2024-05-18 15:20 +0200
          Re: About i386 support Tomas Pospisek <tpo2@sourcepole.ch> - 2024-05-21 18:00 +0200
            Re: About i386 support Samuel Thibault <sthibault@debian.org> - 2024-05-21 18:10 +0200
    Re: About i386 support Thomas Hochstein <thh@thh.name> - 2024-05-17 23:20 +0200
    Re: About i386 support Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> - 2024-05-18 07:40 +0200
    Re: About i386 support "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2024-05-18 12:30 +0200
      Re: About i386 support Paul Gevers <elbrus@debian.org> - 2024-05-18 12:50 +0200
      Re: About i386 support Victor Gamper <victor@wenzeslaus.de> - 2024-05-19 15:10 +0200
        Re: About i386 support Marc Haber <mh+debian-devel@zugschlus.de> - 2024-05-19 17:20 +0200
        Re: About i386 support Alexandre Detiste <alexandre.detiste@gmail.com> - 2024-05-19 18:00 +0200
      Re: About i386 support Steve Langasek <vorlon@debian.org> - 2024-05-26 22:10 +0200

#111783 — About i386 support

Hello everyone,
Is it correct that debian 13 is planned to be released without
an i386 iso and i386 is planned to be deprecated?
If so, I'd like to ask to reconsider this seeing as there is still a
plethora of i386 machines and i386 is as of now still the
second most used architecture according to popcon with 8437
reports there, if I understand correctly.
I personally use the i386 version on multiple machines,
including a ThinkPad T60 (on which I'm writing this on) and a
Transmeta Efficeon, which I'm using as a router and access point.

I personally don't understand why you'd want to deprecate i386,
especially if you compare it to other official architectures
(s390, ppc64el and armel have way less reports on popcon. I don't
want to suggest to deprecate any of these architectures, but just
compare the amount of users there). For many tasks an i386
machine still offers more than enough capabilities and deprecating
i386 now would brick many otherwise completely functional machines.

Just not shipping an i386 iso would still be deprecating an architecture,
as many people don't have the knowledge and/or patience to set up
debian over debootstrap which would again practically brick i386 machines
for many users. Also, deprecating i386 would probably make it
difficult or downright impossible for downstream distributions to
themself keep the i386 version maintained,
as they'd have to invest much more effort to keep i386.

Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep
the i386 version, seeing as it still is important and used?

regards,
Maite Gamper (zeldakatze)

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#111784

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Quoting Victor Gamper (2024-05-17 21:58:58)
> Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep the i386
> version, seeing as it still is important and used?

anything can be done if there are enough contributors who care.

For i386 there is a severe lack of person-power. Do you want to start
contributing your free-time for several years to come to d-i and other areas
which are needed to keep i386 more alive for longer?

Thanks!

cheers, josch

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#111787

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That depends. What would be required of such a person? I also have several i386-class machines that run Debian (though only one that can run Debian 12). 

--J 

Sent from my mobile device.
________________________________
From: Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org>
Sent: Friday, May 17, 2024 15:48
To: Victor Gamper; debian-devel@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: About i386 support

Quoting Victor Gamper (2024-05-17 21:58:58)
> Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep the i386
> version, seeing as it still is important and used?

anything can be done if there are enough contributors who care.

For i386 there is a severe lack of person-power. Do you want to start
contributing your free-time for several years to come to d-i and other areas
which are needed to keep i386 more alive for longer?

Thanks!

cheers, josch

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#111792

Hello,
Whilst I can't for sure say how much free time I'll have, I'd like
to try and contribute. How would you get started with that?

regards,
Maite Gamper (zeldakatze)

On 18.05.24 03:15, rhys@neoquasar.org wrote:
> That depends. What would be required of such a person? I also have 
> several i386-class machines that run Debian (though only one that can 
> run Debian 12).
>
> --J
>
> Sent from my mobile device.
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org>
> *Sent:* Friday, May 17, 2024 15:48
> *To:* Victor Gamper; debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> *Subject:* Re: About i386 support
>
> Quoting Victor Gamper (2024-05-17 21:58:58)
> > Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep 
> the i386
> > version, seeing as it still is important and used?
>
> anything can be done if there are enough contributors who care.
>
> For i386 there is a severe lack of person-power. Do you want to start
> contributing your free-time for several years to come to d-i and other 
> areas
> which are needed to keep i386 more alive for longer?
>
> Thanks!
>
> cheers, josch

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#111874

Hi Maite, hi Rhys,


don't top-post. That breaks the flow of the arguments being argued about.

>> *From:* Johannes Schauer Marin Rodrigues <josch@debian.org>
>> *Sent:* Friday, May 17, 2024 15:48
>> *To:* Victor Gamper; debian-devel@lists.debian.org
>> *Subject:* Re: About i386 support
>>
>> Quoting Victor Gamper (2024-05-17 21:58:58)
>> > Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep 
>> the i386
>> > version, seeing as it still is important and used?
>>
>> anything can be done if there are enough contributors who care.
>>
>> For i386 there is a severe lack of person-power. Do you want to start
>> contributing your free-time for several years to come to d-i and other 
>> areas
>> which are needed to keep i386 more alive for longer?

 > On 18.05.24 03:15, rhys@neoquasar.org wrote:
 >> That depends. What would be required of such a person? I also have
 >> several i386-class machines that run Debian (though only one that can
 >> run Debian 12).

On 18.05.24 15:16, Maite Gamper wrote:

 > Whilst I can't for sure say how much free time I'll have, I'd like
 > to try and contribute. How would you get started with that?

There's somewhere a page that is showing how much of the archive is 
built by architecture. A search engine should help you finding that 
page. Pick the package that is furthest down the stack of package 
dependencies that is not building on i386. Find out why. Fix the bug. 
Check if there's a bug report about the problem. Send a patch. If the 
maintainer doesn't have time then become a Debian Maintainer oder 
Developer yourself consult with the package's maintainers and upload 
fixed packages.
*t

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#111875

Hello,

Tomas Pospisek, le mar. 21 mai 2024 17:22:47 +0200, a ecrit:
> > > Quoting Victor Gamper (2024-05-17 21:58:58)
> > > For i386 there is a severe lack of person-power. Do you want to start
> > > contributing your free-time for several years to come to d-i and
> > > other areas
> > > which are needed to keep i386 more alive for longer?
> 
> > On 18.05.24 03:15, rhys@neoquasar.org wrote:
> >> That depends. What would be required of such a person? I also have
> >> several i386-class machines that run Debian (though only one that can
> >> run Debian 12).
> 
> On 18.05.24 15:16, Maite Gamper wrote:
> 
> > Whilst I can't for sure say how much free time I'll have, I'd like
> > to try and contribute. How would you get started with that?
> 
> There's somewhere a page that is showing how much of the archive is built by
> architecture. A search engine should help you finding that page. Pick the
> package that is furthest down the stack of package dependencies that is not
> building on i386.

It's probably not that easy to find.

The page I know about that would suit best would be the Build-Attempted
and Failed sections of:

https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=i386&suite=sid

> Find out why. Fix the bug. Check if there's a bug report
> about the problem. Send a patch. If the maintainer doesn't have time then
> become a Debian Maintainer [or] Developer yourself, consult with the
> package's maintainers and upload fixed packages.

Yup

Samuel

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#111785

Victor Gamper wrote:

> Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep
> the i386 version, seeing as it still is important and used?

<https://release.debian.org/testing/arch_qualify.html>

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#111788

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Hi

On 17-05-2024 9:58 p.m., Victor Gamper wrote:
> Is it correct that debian 13 is planned to be released without
> an i386 iso and i386 is planned to be deprecated?

Our current position is described here: 
https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2023/12/msg00003.html

Paul

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#111790

On Fri, May 17, 2024 at 09:58:58PM +0200, Victor Gamper wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> Is it correct that debian 13 is planned to be released without
> an i386 iso and i386 is planned to be deprecated?
> If so, I'd like to ask to reconsider this seeing as there is still a
> plethora of i386 machines and i386 is as of now still the
> second most used architecture according to popcon with 8437
> reports there, if I understand correctly.
> I personally use the i386 version on multiple machines,
> including a ThinkPad T60 (on which I'm writing this on) and a
> Transmeta Efficeon, which I'm using as a router and access point.
> 

The Transmeta _won't_ do x86_64/amd64 - but is obscure (and rare) hardware
at this point.

The T60 will do amd64.

At this point, any i386-only hardware is well over ten years old.
There's no real UEFI support - so legacy MBR.

Amything else can do amd64. The law of diminishing returns, the lack
of real i386 hardware to test on - at this point, i386 32 bit is effectively
dead. Several large packages can't be built natively on i386 - things like
firefox and libreoffice really need to be built on amd64 hardware for i386.

Pretty much every major Linux distribution is dropping _any_ 32 bit: Debian
is trying to support 32 bit on armhf, for example, which is more than
Ubuntu and Fedora.

In reality, i386 should probably have been dropped early (or at the last
minute) for bookworm; some libraries will be kept for compatibility
but it's not realistic to maintain i386 for the whole of the trixie lifecycle.



> I personally don't understand why you'd want to deprecate i386,
> especially if you compare it to other official architectures
> (s390, ppc64el and armel have way less reports on popcon. I don't
> want to suggest to deprecate any of these architectures, but just
> compare the amount of users there). For many tasks an i386
> machine still offers more than enough capabilities and deprecating
> i386 now would brick many otherwise completely functional machines.
> 

See above. Popcon isn't really an absolute measure: not everyone enables
popcon so there may be very many machines running in server farms or
whatever. Very few people have an s390 around: ppc64el similarly and
armel is valid for less and less hardware (modulo the Raspberry Pi Zero)

_Some_ embedded hardware was sold more recently but it wouldn't
necessarily run Debian.

> Just not shipping an i386 iso would still be deprecating an architecture,
> as many people don't have the knowledge and/or patience to set up
> debian over debootstrap which would again practically brick i386 machines
> for many users. Also, deprecating i386 would probably make it
> difficult or downright impossible for downstream distributions to
> themself keep the i386 version maintained,
> as they'd have to invest much more effort to keep i386.
> 

If downstream versions _REALLY_ need genuine i386, they also need to 
ask Debian and step up to maintain. Any Ubuntu derivatives - so
second order Debian versions - are already out of support on the 
latest Ubuntu.

> Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep
> the i386 version, seeing as it still is important and used?
> 
> regards,
> Maite Gamper (zeldakatze)
>

It would need several maintainers to step up and maintain hardware
and track upstream libraries, compatibility and a recompile farm.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but I think that's it in a nutshell.

Andy
(amacater@debian.org) 

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#111791

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Hi Andrew,

Release team member hat on
On 18-05-2024 12:28 p.m., Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> In reality, i386 should probably have been dropped early (or at the last
> minute) for bookworm; some libraries will be kept for compatibility
> but it's not realistic to maintain i386 for the whole of the trixie lifecycle.

Please elaborate. We aren't planning to drop i386. If you have more 
information than I have, we'd like to learn.

Paul

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#111808

I believe I could swap out the processor on my T60,
however, I'd both need to have that processor and
make sure that it is actually possible. It still would
not really make sense on a platform that only supports
3G of physical RAM.

Anyways, if the only reason why i386 cd images are not
supported anymore is the lack of contributors,
I'd be willing to contribute in that area, if it's possible.

regards,
Maite Gamper (zeldakatze)

On 18.05.24 13:24, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> On Sat, 2024-05-18 at 10:28 +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
>> On Fri, May 17, 2024 at 09:58:58PM +0200, Victor Gamper wrote:
>>> Hello everyone,
>>> Is it correct that debian 13 is planned to be released without
>>> an i386 iso and i386 is planned to be deprecated?
>>> If so, I'd like to ask to reconsider this seeing as there is still a
>>> plethora of i386 machines and i386 is as of now still the
>>> second most used architecture according to popcon with 8437
>>> reports there, if I understand correctly.
>>> I personally use the i386 version on multiple machines,
>>> including a ThinkPad T60 (on which I'm writing this on) and a
>>> Transmeta Efficeon, which I'm using as a router and access point.
>>>
>> The Transmeta _won't_ do x86_64/amd64 - but is obscure (and rare) hardware
>> at this point.
>>
>> The T60 will do amd64.
> [...]
>
> According to thinkwiki, the T60 had CPU options of Core Solo/Duo (32-
> bit) and Core 2 Duo (64-bit) CPUs, so this may or may not be correct.
>
> Ben.
>

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#111810

On Sun, 19 May 2024 15:03:18 +0200, Victor Gamper
<victor@wenzeslaus.de> wrote:
>I believe I could swap out the processor on my T60,
>however, I'd both need to have that processor and
>make sure that it is actually possible. It still would
>not really make sense on a platform that only supports
>3G of physical RAM.
>
>Anyways, if the only reason why i386 cd images are not
>supported anymore is the lack of contributors,
>I'd be willing to contribute in that area, if it's possible.

If you don't personally care about that T60, because it's the notebook
your mom gave you for your 16th birthday or so, you would probably be
better served with buying another old T-Thinkpad that can run amd64
AND suport amounts of memory that haven't totally fallen out of time.

Ten year old 64bit Notebooks such as the T420 or T430 (three years
younger than your T60) sell for below 100 Euros. Is that a problem?

Greetings
Marc
-- 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marc Haber         |   " Questions are the         | Mailadresse im Header
Rhein-Neckar, DE   |     Beginning of Wisdom "     | 
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 6224 1600402

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#111811

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Hi,

I have 900 :-) (Moxa V2416). For these type of industrial/embedded use,
popcon is irrelevant. The debian-installer mostly too, the basis image was
Wheezy based with unknown third party tweaks and with only dist upgrade
from that souped up image.

The remaining other legacy project can dist upgrade from bookworm.

But well things do start falling appart anyway. This random nginx memory
corruption bug is annoying.

Greetings

Le dim. 19 mai 2024, 17:31, <rhys@neoquasar.org> a écrit :

> I have an N270 system I can use to contribute, if someone is willing to
> explain what I need to do to make it useful.
> ------------------------------
> *From:* Victor Gamper <victor@wenzeslaus.de>
> *Sent:* Sunday, May 19, 2024 08:03
> *To:* debian-devel@lists.debian.org
> *Subject:* Re: About i386 support
>

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#111935

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On Sat, May 18, 2024 at 10:28:21AM +0000, Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> Pretty much every major Linux distribution is dropping _any_ 32 bit: Debian
> is trying to support 32 bit on armhf, for example, which is more than
> Ubuntu and Fedora.

I don't know what you're basing it on, but it's simply not true.  We've just
released Ubuntu 24.04 LTS with full support for (2038-proof) armhf
userspace.

We don't have any armhf images released with 24.04 LTS because we've dropped
32-bit support for *Raspberry Pi*, but that's a separate matter.  We expect
support for other armhf devices for both Ubuntu and Ubuntu Core to come soon
in 24.04.

-- 
Steve Langasek                   Give me a lever long enough and a Free OS
Debian Developer                   to set it on, and I can move the world.
Ubuntu Developer                                   https://www.debian.org/
slangasek@ubuntu.com                                     vorlon@debian.org

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