
Change of scope and target market for i386 - campuscodi
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-release/2017-September/004212.html
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rwmj
Fedora nearly dropped i686 earlier this year, and might do so soon. More
specifically there was a proposal to stop building i686 kernels[1] which _didn
't_ go through but it did start a lot of discussion on the mailing list.
Eventually it was decided to set up an x86 SIG for anyone interested in
maintaining it[2][3]. It's yet to be seen how the SIG will work out.

[1]
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Stop_Building_i686_Ke...](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Stop_Building_i686_Kernels)

[2] [https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1737](https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1737)

[3]
[https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/x86](https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/x86)

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leggomylibro
This is really only tangentially-related, but on the subject of removing
architecture support, can I point out how annoying it is that Eclipse 4 does
not target ARM architectures?

Look at this:
[http://archive.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.6-20...](http://archive.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.6-201606061100/)

Linux (x86/GTK+) Linux (x86_64/GTK+) Linux (PPC/GTK+) Linux (PPC64/GTK+) Linux
(s390x/GTK+) Linux (s390/GTK+) Linux (PPC64LE/GTK+)

And yet no ARM...I'll bet more people use that than s390.

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rwmj
Is Eclipse still written in Java? I wonder why architecture support has to be
added at all.

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rhencke
There very may well be other reasons, but a large one is that Eclipse is
written using SWT, not AWT/Swing.

SWT is Java, and has a platform-independent API, but has platform-specific
implementations. (SWT JARs are unique per OS/architecture)

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phippsbrad
I have Intel Atom netbooks that currently run Ubuntu wonderfully. But they are
low RAM and the 32bit version runs better than the 64bit (if they can even run
64bit). I am worried I will have to drop Ubuntu and switch to plain Debian
because of this.

~~~
cup-of-tea
Same. It's funny actually, last time I installed something on there I just
_assumed_ it was x86_64 and was thoroughly confused for a good few moments
when the USB stick would not boot. But yeah, I, for one, still run Linux on
i386 hardware. My netbook isn't obsolete. In fact, I don't think I can buy
anything like it any more.

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maccard
> My netbook isn't obsolete. In fact, I don't think I can buy anything like it
> any more.

That's pretty much the definition of obsolete

~~~
foobarbecue
Antique ≠ obsolete

~~~
qplex
Funny that for other stuff it usually takes 100 years to be considered
antique.

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aldeluis
I use 32bit server images in VPS because the RAM usage is significantly lower.
This is critical in VPS units with 512MB of RAM... I'm worried.

~~~
DeepYogurt
Try a different distro?

~~~
amongwhales
That's what I was thinking. Arch switched to all x86_64 a few months ago
(announced the phase-out) but, Arch would probably be just as lightweight. I'm
not sure what DE it comes with

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gh02t
> I'm not sure what DE it comes with

None, the default install of Arch leaves you with a terminal prompt and basic
utilities. You can install whatever you like from there. It's closer to
something like the Debian minimal install than Ubuntu desktop.

~~~
amongwhales
I meant what does Ubuntu Server come with. Is it Unity too?

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gh02t
It doesn't come with one either, it's for servers. You can install the ubuntu-
desktop package (which is basically what you get off of the desktop install
disk) afterwards, though. Not really clear if that will still be option on
i386, that is do a net install and then install ubuntu-desktop. It sounds to
me like they are just retiring the installer images for i386 and not the
desktop related packages, so if you really need it then you can go this route.
I bet it won't be well tested/supported though.

On a related note, Unity is getting the axe and 17.10 will ship GNOME as the
default DE.

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acoye
The end of x86 32bit is near … And here I am trying to find an up to date
distro for my G5s :D

Tl;dr opensource or not, market share dictates supported archs.

The only difference been, you can try to build from the sources for your
vintage hardware.

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davidgerard
I got an SSD on Friday and accidentally downloaded the 32-bit desktop ISO for
16.04 ... even with PAE on 8GB RAM with 8GB swap, it turns out 32-bit Firefox
crashes when its virtual memory footprint gets too big ...

So yeah. 32-bit is now a specialist thing. Or you could use Debian.

16.04 is supported until 2021, so ...

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jmkni
32 bit is handy in development because you can run more than one.

On most processors you can only run one 64 bit VM, but as many 32 bit VMs as
you can handle.

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chansecodina
Now I'm curious: Which hypervisor has that limitation?

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jmkni
It's more that any consumer grade processor seems to have this limitation.

I have an i7-6700HQ for example, and I can either have Hyper-V turned on (I'm
on Windows) in which case I can only run 32-bit VM's with VirtualBox, or I can
turn off Hyper-V in which case I can run one 64-bit VM on VirtualBox, and then
only 32-bit VM's past that.

If I'm doing Android development, I can't run a 64-bit VM at the same time as
the Android emulator is 64-bit.

Sometimes I want to run my web server, an Android VM, and maybe a Redis server
on Ubuntu in a VM. I can't emulate Android and run a 64-bit VM, so the 32-bit
Ubuntu distro is invaluable here.

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yuhong
The fun thing is that I think Ubuntu has not been bothering with non-PAE
kernels for years now I think.

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jwilk
Do people actually use x86 for IoT?

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DeepYogurt
Glad to see 32bit intel being dropped.

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mtgx
I hadn't considered this, but I wonder if in a few years AMD will have more
leverage against Intel because everyone uses AMD64?

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Animats

        Discontinue to provide for i386
        * Server classic img/iso
        * Desktop live
    

Oh, they just mean 32-bit x86. I thought for a moment this was Ubuntu killing
Linux on the desktop.

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dpcx
x86_64 is still available... I don't know the last time I personally used an
i386 image from anything.

