Hi Salvatore, On 09-09-2023 10:15, Salvatore Bonaccorso wrote:
but should have been support for armel been dropped earlier and should we do it for trixie
The kernel for armel went over some hardware limits before (I was affected with my NAS, where I couldn't upgrade the kernel to bullseye as documented in the release notes [1]). Is the current situation reaching the limit for all armel devices, or "just" for some and are the others probably fine for some years to come?
If we're now reaching the final limit and if it was foreseeable that we would reach that limit, then yes it would have made sense to drop armel *before* the bookworm release, but alas. If the kernel team can't support the kernel on armel, than armel shouldn't be a release architecture for trixie. If it's only some devices, than we "just" need to communicate that clearly.
I don't have a clear advice for the current situation in security and the next point release, let's hope you can stretch the situation a bit longer. I recall that the kernel package has safety checks in place and refuses to *try* to install the kernel if it doesn't fit on the hardware. That means that you don't cripple the hardware of affected people, but "merely" can't give them security support? I guess it would be possible (as long as support lasts; no LTS support) for effected systems to run the security supported bullseye kernel.
Paul[1] https://www.debian.org/releases/bullseye/armel/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#no-longer-supported-hardware
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