Why not support power 8 beyond 2028? It is still a good system and supports newer little endian. Hopefully, you can reconsider and keep power 8 for as long as power 9/10 regarding baseline support.
> On Oct 26, 2025, at 5:40 AM, Bastian Blank <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi > > We never did a real discussion about architecture baselines before, but I > think > we should do that. We also don't have any guidelines what we as Debian want > to > actually support. But given that we are a general purpose distribution, we > have to find a balance. > > As a general guidance I would like to aim for a ten to 15 years support range > at release time. The cutoff in respect to the expected 2027 release date of > Forky would therefor be 2012 to 2017. More time is given for widely used > architectures, less for more specialized ones. > > Bastian > > # Current architecture baseline > > Only three architectures set an explicit baseline in gcc-12 (Bookworm) and > gcc-15 (Forky): > * armhf: armv7-a+fp > * i386: i686 > * s390: z196 > > All other architectures use the default values. > > # Proposal for architecture baseline > > ## amd64 (and i386) > > * x86-64-v2: Supported since around 2008[^x86]. Used in RedHat 9[^redhat9x86]. > * x86-64-v3: Supported since around 2013-2015[^x86]. Used in RedHat > 10[^redhat10]. > > I propose to use the x86-64-v2 baseline in Forky. It gives us more then the > 15 > years and everyone else already switched to it or even a newer variant. > Factoring in a possible LTS for Trixie, this means that x86-64-v1 will stop > being supported by Debian in 2030. > > ## ppc64el > > * POWER8: Launched in 2014[^power8]. > * POWER9: Launched in 2017[^power9]. Used in RedHat 9[^redhat9] and > 10[^redhat10]. > > I propose to use the POWER9 baseline in Forky. The Debian infrastructure > seems > to be comprised of all POWER9s. This means POWER8 will stop being supported > in > 2028. > > ## s390x > > * z14: Launched in 2017[^z14]. Used by RedHat 10[^redhat10]. > * z15: Launched in 2019[^z15]. Used by next Ubuntu. > > I propose to use the z15 baseline in Forky. Yes, this is less then ten years, > but s390 is such a niche architecture and all we do is best (often not even > this) effort support. The Debian infrastructure is documented to be at least > z15, all accesible system are actually z16. This means that z14 and older > will > stop being support in 2028. > > # How to see supported baseline > > The dynamic linker of glibc can show what microarchiture level it considers > supported on the current CPU. The "supported" marker is relevant in this > case. > > ## amd64 > ``` > % /usr/lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 --help | sed -n '/^Subdirectories of > glibc-hwcaps/,$p' > Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps directories, in priority order: > x86-64-v4 > x86-64-v3 (supported, searched) > x86-64-v2 (supported, searched) > ``` > > ## ppc64el > ``` > % /usr/lib64/ld64.so.2 --help | sed -n '/^Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps/,$p' > > Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps directories, in priority order: > power10 > power9 (supported, searched) > ``` > > ## s390x > ``` > % /usr/lib/ld64.so.1 --help | sed -n '/^Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps/,/^ > z15/p' > Subdirectories of glibc-hwcaps directories, in priority order: > z16 (supported, searched) > z15 (supported, searched) > ``` > > [^power8]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER8 > [^power9]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9 > [^x86]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Microarchitecture_levels > [^z14]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_z14_(microprocessor) > [^z15]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_z15_(microprocessor) > [^redhat9]: > https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/9/html/9.0_release_notes/architectures > [^redhat9x86]: > https://developers.redhat.com/blog/2021/01/05/building-red-hat-enterprise-linux-9-for-the-x86-64-v2-microarchitecture-level > [^redhat10]: > https://docs.redhat.com/en/documentation/red_hat_enterprise_linux/10/html/considerations_in_adopting_rhel_10/architectures > > -- > Spock: The odds of surviving another attack are 13562190123 to 1, Captain. >
