Re: i386 in the future (was Re: 64-bit time_t transition for 32-bit archs: a proposal)
On Wed, 2023-05-31 at 19:48 +0100, Wookey wrote:
> On 2023-05-31 07:29 -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
>
> > > Hanging on to systems using power-hungry chips from 20 years ago instead of
> > > intercepting a system such as this is not reducing the number of computers
> > > that end up in the waste stream, it just keeps you stuck with a more
> > > power-hungry system.
>
> a) That's not necessarily a problem if the machine is running from a
> renewable supply. The issue is emissions, not power consumption per
> se.
Thankfully I have a spiritual power filter[1] based on anthroposophic
principles that makes my computers consume only renewable energy ;-)
> and b) as both John and I have pointed out there are low-power i386
> systems still in use.
>
> c) it's not our choice to make. If people insist on using more
> electricity than they need to for their computing, that's on them.
> (we
> enable enormous amounts of this already - old i386 systems probably
> barely register at this point)
>
> Debian should be supporting people using whatever suits them where
> that effort is reasonably proportionate. We are not driven by the
> 'sell new stuff' goals of hardware manufactuers so we should IMHO be
> erring on the side of keeping stuff going as long as there is
> sufficient community support.
I doubt we have that, see some of the issues listed for i386 on
https://release.debian.org/testing/arch_qualify.html
I would not be surprised if we consider dropping leaf software where
builds start to hit the address space limit (I expect browsers & such).
Plus the broken FPU implementation as we don't require SSE.
And it *is* our choice to make to not spend time on dead architectures.
Ansgar
[1]: It also works for other carbon emissions!
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