>>>>> On 2023-05-19, Steve McIntyre wrote: >>>>> Colin Watson wrote: >>>>> On Fri, May 19, 2023 at 09:19:35AM -0500, G. Branden Robinson wrote: >>>>> LB == Luca Boccassi wrote:
LB> +1 for stopping publishing installers for i386, it has been LB> mentioned many times but it's always worth repeating: electricity LB> costs to keep running i386 hardware are already way higher than LB> what it costs to buy a cheap, low-power replacement like a LB> raspberry pi, that also provides better performance. I'm living within some 200 km distance from a major hydroelectric plant, so I can afford being more concerned about freedom than electricity costs [*]. I admit I haven't researched this question properly, but my understanding is that while, say, the AMD SB740 chipset from c. 2008 (that my primary box is built on) is very well-documented (and well supported by free software), many newer ones are not nearly as much (regardless of their power efficiency.) Granted, it's amd64, but it's still a 'retro' machine already. Specifically, while I have little experience with RPis (and SBCs in general), http://wiki.debian.org/CheapServerBoxHardware suggests that RPis aren't all that well supported by Debian main. CSBH> Unsuitable CSBH> * RaspberryPi: requires nonfree software to start up CSBH> * RaspberryPi2: requires nonfree software to start up CSBH> * RaspberryPi3: requires nonfree software to start up [*] My electricity bill is under 20 USD / month. >>> Well, maybe not a strong view, but a sense of vague unease--possibly >>> an ill-informed one. As someone who has used SIMH for "real" >>> work, I have to ask how someone would conduct an install to a 32-bit >>> x86 machine running under emulation, assuming no OS on the simulated >>> machine. >> I occasionally use 32-bit x86 even today (mostly for not very good >> historical reasons, but nevertheless), and I do it by using a 32-bit >> container on a 64-bit x86 machine instead. It's much faster to run, >> and it doesn't depend on installer support. There are doubtless >> edge cases where you need a completely separate kernel, but they >> aren't really ones I run into. > ACK. For people needing/testing i386 stuff, even just a simple > debootstrap and {s,}chroot will cover the vast majority of needs. > That's how we've been building i386 software already for ages in > Debian already. > More complex things can be done if needed: loopback mount an image, Or: attach a disk, partition it, mkfs and mount as needed... > debootstrap, install a kernel, etc. I don't see this as something > we should be spending much effort on in the future. FWIW, I'm using debootstrap to install Debian on my boxes for something like a full decade now. Personally, I wouldn't be inconvenienced in the least were Debian to stop providing D-I images for i386, or any other architecture for that matter. But I'd rather appreciate if it'd still be possible to run i386 binaries on Debian, including running a full Debian install on a i386 (i686) machine, real or emulated. (For i586 and other older platforms, I've found I could happily rely on NetBSD instead.) -- FSF associate member #7257 np. Border Line by Paolo Pavan