>> > Perhaps it is time that we evaluate where i686 stands in Fedora more >> > closely. For a starting suggestion, I would recommend that we do not >> > treat it as a release blocking architecture. This is not the same as >> > demotion to secondary architecture status. That has broader >> > implications in both buildsys and ecosystem. My suggestion is >> > narrowly focused so that builds still proceed as today, but if there >> > is something broken for i686 it does not block the release of whatever >> > milestone we are pursuing. >> > >> > (To be clear, I would support a move to secondary arch status for >> > i686, but I am not suggesting it at this time.) >> >> So to put a finer point on this, our shipping i686 images depends on a >> broader community effort beyond the kernel maintainers in the Fedora >> Engineering team. That needs to precisely not mean more heroics on >> the part of e.g. QE, rel-eng, etc. I have no idea what the pushback >> on this issue is, but I'm sure this thread will tell us. But given >> that Fedora is supposed to encourage such community effort, it would >> be good to see what people are willing to do to build it. > > Here's my perspective as an i686 Fedora user... > > I have a box (2009-ish) that's in use as a file/backup server. As such, I > don't > spend a lot of time futzing with it - it doesn't run rawhide, it rarely runs > the prereleases until beta or later time. If something breaks, I'll look at > it, send some feedback, update it as necessary, and back off to a working > version. And historically, it *hasn't* broken. > > But, if it did break that hard... would I spend a month digging into the > kernel source and bisecting to try and find a fix? Or would I spend the > $100-120 to slap a new motherboard in it and install the x86_64 version? > > I'd like to say I'd do the former. But realisitically it's the latter. And I > wonder how much of the i686 Fedora-using community is in the same boat.
A lot of the users of i686 that I know use it from live images or installing live images which, and I've not followed the issue too closely so might be a little off here, wouldn't have hit the bug that was being seen by the installer side of things. All those uses would also generally not be a rawhide/dev branch user. Peter -- devel mailing list devel@lists.fedoraproject.org https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/devel Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
