Hi,
On 02/02/2016 08:58, Stefan Bader wrote:
>My guess is that: all currently shipped hardware, with enough support
>to run full Unity (7) Desktop, is amd64. Tested with amd64 kernel, and
>amd64 graphics drivers. And hardware validation is done on amd64 too.
>
>In 2016, people with i386-only hardware are unlikely to be capable to
>run Unity 7 Desktop, and probably run other Ubuntu variants. I guess
>there are some accidental i386 users, e.g. those that have installed
>i386 variant on amd64 hardware.
Just wondering whether you considered netbooks here. Not that old (maybe 6y?)
and at least the two specimens I would have around are early Atoms (i386 only)
but with (also early) i915 Intel graphics. They used to be reasonably
accelerated to cope. Not sure about unity 7. But maybe some reason to allow at
least for 16.04 some i386 iso (by 18.04 the problem might be resolved through
the crappy life-span recent hw seems to have)...
For such hardware, 16.04 LTS is supported until Apr. 2019 (the notebook
will be 9y old) or if you want to use a more recent release probably a
lightweight flavour of Ubuntu would be a good alternative.
From a QA point of view, supporting a Desktop i386 LTS for 5 years
means testing 1 release and 4 or 5 point releases. Testing a release
involves maintaining automated tests of the installer (read manual
review of the failures), and manual testing of the images. I don't think
it is worth the cost if the target is the hardware you mention.
I'd rather beef up the test suite to cover common multiarch i386 scenarios.
JB.
--
Jean-Baptiste Lallement
irc: jibel
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