Well said, 100% agree with Jan-Daniel! Killing off an arch like Power8 that is still very useable is not ideal. Power8 should remain in Debian and is not a “retro computing” platform.
> On Oct 26, 2025, at 8:54 PM, Jan-Daniel Kaplanski <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> >> Because that's 15 years and Debian's purpose is not to enable retrocomputing >> projects. > Huh? What is Debian's purpose then? It even boasts about its broad hw support > on the "Reasons to use Debian" page.[1] > > Besides, the armhf baseline of armv7-a+fp aligns with the Cortex-A8 from > 2005[2]. I highly doubt that archaic architecture has a lot of users besides > SBCs up to the generation of RPi 2 and legacy embedded systems that are > likely EOL too. Especially since aarch64 came in 2012 with armv8-a on the > Cortex-A53/A57[3][4]. > > POWER8 went EOSL in 10/2024[5] (only a year ago, which in my books is far > away from being a "retrocomputing" platform btw), plus POWER9 systems will > reach the end of standard service on 31st Jan 2026[6], so by the time Forky > is around in 2027 POWER9 will be obsolete too. Considering that, it's > reasonable to ask for POWER8 to be supported beyond 2028, or in a more > radical manner, move the baseline to POWER10 instead. > > --- > >> As a general guidance I would like to aim for a ten to 15 years support range >> at release time. > I take issue with that, as this approach does neither reflect on the actual > user base nor the shelf life of a given architecture. There is the risk you > kill off a platform too early when it still has an active user base. It only > works in regards to POWER8/POWER9 because those have a 10 year span from > release to EOL. Rather than "release + 15 years" I feel like it should be > "EOL + X years", though there should be debate on what that "X years" may be. > > --- > > That's just my personal take on this as someone who is not involved in active > development but likes to keep tabs on what's happening. From the perspective > of a systems administrator, I'm not really fond of the idea of having to > switch to a different OS because the platform is killed off on the basis of > an arbitrary time frame. > > Cheers, JD > > [1]: https://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian.en.html > [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A8 > [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A53 > [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A57 > [5]: https://www.ibm.com/new/announcements/ibm-power8-end-of-service > [6]: > https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/announcements/services-withdrawal-discontinuance-service-select-power-systems-products-replacements-available >
