On Fri, 26 May 2023 at 00:27, Roger Lynn <ro...@rilynn.me.uk> wrote: > > On 21/05/2023 07:00, James Addison wrote: > > On Fri, 19 May 2023 at 22:58, Ansgar <ans...@43-1.org> wrote: > >> One of the problems with popcon is that it draws too much attention to > >> old releases which isn't really interesting when talking about future > >> developments. If one looks at arch usage per release (as reported to > >> popcon) one gets this table: > >> > >> | Architecture | jessie | stretch | buster | bullseye | bookworm/sid | > >> |----------------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------------| > >> | alpha | 1 | | | | 4 | > >> | amd64 | 9090 | 17156 | 41137 | 108145 | 14800 | > >> | arm64 | | 1 | 93 | 937 | 203 | > >> | armel | 21 | 47 | 67 | 68 | 10 | > >> | armhf | 7 | 18 | 216 | 429 | 49 | > >> | hppa | | | | | 8 | > >> | hurd-i386 | | | | 4 | 6 | > >> | i386 | 1318 | 1231 | 1495 | 3042 | 168 | > >> | ia64 | | | | | 3 | > >> | kfreebsd-amd64 | 2 | | | | | > >> | m68k | | 1 | | | 4 | > >> | mips | 2 | | 6 | | | > >> | mips64el | | | 6 | 4 | | > >> | mipsel | 2 | 1 | 7 | | | > >> | powerpc | 13 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 18 | > >> | ppc64 | | | | 1 | 28 | > >> | ppc64el | | 5 | 16 | | 12 | > >> | riscv64 | | | | | 15 | > >> | s390x | | | | 8 | 3 | > >> | sh4 | | | | | 1 | > >> | sparc64 | | | | | 11 | > >> | x32 | | | | | 2 | > >> |----------------+--------+---------+--------+----------+--------------| > >> | ∑ | 10456 | 18461 | 43044 | 112639 | 15345 | > >> #+TBLFM: @>$2..@>$>=vsum(@I..II) > >> > >> where i386 has dropped from 13% to 7% to 3% to 3% and finally to 1%. > >> Also interesting is that arm64 has taken over i386 on bookwork/sid. > >> > >> We don't know how many people downloaded i386 instead of amd64 as they > >> have an Intel CPU. > >> > >> What is also not clear is the bias of systems having popcon enabled at > >> all (it seems to be mostly desktop systems) and how it looks on the > >> total population. > > > > Thanks, those are better statistics (and good notes about their > > limitations). > > > > I may be playing devil's advocate, but I do also read from those that > > the i386 install-base, even dwindled as it has to ~1%, remains more > > popular than many other architectures (within whatever dimension of > > users enable popcon) where we do provide install images, and then that > > those users tend to upgrade to the latest i386 release of Debian that > > they can -- and/or that despite the percentage-of-total trend > > reducing, the absolute population of those i386 users is growing (I > > guess the former is the larger contributing factor, but it's hard to > > determine from the numbers only). > > The popcon graphs clearly show that the absolute number (not proportion) of > i386 reports flattened off in 2008 at about 65000, when AMD64 became > popular. The number of i386 reports has been falling since 2014, and is now > about 10000, most of which are from old releases (oldstable or older). It > seems likely that the number of i386 reports from stable will be overtaken > by ARM64 during the period of Bookworm.
Thanks Roger. I concede that the absolute number of i386 popcon reports has been falling; this graph makes that clear[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221223090933/https://popcon.debian.org/stat/sub-i386.png Also, yep, it does seem possible that i386's position in terms of total popcon reports could fall into third place behind AMD64 and ARM64 over the next two years or so. Is an architecture's ranking position within popcon reports a significant factor in whether it should be installer-supported? Or is it perhaps only a secondary indicator and there are other considerations that are more important? (for example, whether we have volunteers keen to support it..) An aside: the trend for ARM64 reports appears to include a few steep increments followed by pauses. I'm left wondering whether those correspond to additional hardware support, arrival of popular packages in the ARM64 archive, or other factors[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20221223090903/https://popcon.debian.org/stat/sub-arm64.png (the reason I mention that is that the absence of a continuous-ish, linear-ish trend makes it more difficult for me to predict when ARM64 will overtake i386 - I get the sense that there are probably real-world trends that I'm missing that aren't immediately apparent in a graph) [1] - A graph titled "Number of submissions for i386", containing two trendlines: "i386" in maroon, and "all submissions" in green. The x-axis is a time range from Y2004 to Y2023, the left y-axis is from zero to 80k (for i386) and the right y-axis is from zero to 250k (for all submissions). Very approximately, the green line traces a 45-degree angle from bottom-left to top-right, leveling out slightly around 2018. Both trendlines show a large increase around Y2007, up to a plateau (or near-plateau, in the case of the then-increasing-again green line) -- 65k for i386 as Roger mentions, and approximately 75k across all submissions. Around 2014, the red i386 trendline begins a descent, intersecting the green line momentarily after (although to be honest, that is something of a visual distraction, because intersection of lines on a chart where the y-axes are different is difficult to reason about). The descent of the red i386 trendline from Y2014 is fairly steep - perhaps a 55 degree angle - although it begins to level out gradually, nearing perhaps 30 or 35 degrees towards the end of Y2022. At the end of the chart, around October of Y2022, i386 has a value slightly above 10k and the total across all submissions is perhaps 210k or so. [2] - A graph titled "Number of submissions for arm64", containing two trendlines: "arm64" in maroon, and "all submissions" in green. The y-axis for the red trendline is from zero to 1200. Data for the red arm64 trendline begins around Y2014, yet by Y2020 it shows gradual and slow linear growth, remaining below a value of 200. In Y2020, something happens and by early Y2021, the value has jumped to 400 or so, where it fluctuates briefly up/down by 10 points or so a few times. After a momentary drop in August of Y2021, the red trendline then makes four ascents: 200, 150, 50, 200 - arriving at perhaps slightly above 1000 in October of Y2022 where the graph ends.
