Re: Reducing the amount of i386 Live images for bullseye
Good morning Jonathan and list group.
I personally think dropping i386 isn't a good thing to do. I,
personally, am trying to help developing countries (in Oceania) get
into Linux and many people rely on gifted hardware which much of it is
i386. If you decide to drop i386 you will limit how many people can
use Debian.
Dropping i386 because so many other distros are doing it is not a
valid reason for dropping it.
If you keep it I think keeping MATE, LX** (both), XFCE is appropriate
because you want to give people choice of what they want not what you
think they want. To me Standard is useless, and always has been, it is
much easier to install via netinst than via standard. Another thing to
consider is an image with a Window Manager like Fluxbox that has
Synaptic so that people can install their favourite DE rather than the
DE that Debian thinks everyone wants.
FYI I run a few i386 machines (an old Pentium 4 desktop, 3 Panasonic
Toughbook CF-29, and an eMachine netbook) that are still going strong.
The CF-29s and eMachine are used everyday.
Of course this is just my humble opinion.
Cheers.
Michael.
On 18/10/2019, Jonathan Carter <jcc@debian.org> wrote:
> Hi Live team
>
> For a while, the discussions have popped up whether we still want or
> need i386 desktop live images. Building all those images and testing
> them at a regular basis (sometimes regular as in, every few months) and
> also at release time is quite tedious, and they're pretty much useless
> compared to the amd64 images on any computer from the last 5 years (yes,
> that crappy Atom cpu laptop that is locked to 32 bit is older than 5
> years already).
>
> I believe that at least the KDE and Gnome i386 images aren't that
> useful. You need a reasonably beefy computer with enough memory to run
> those, and at that point you might as well use the amd64 media.
>
> Since many other distributions are making the jump to dropping i386
> installation media entirely, I think that it's a good idea to keep some
> live media around for one more release, as long as bullseye continues to
> make it easy to do so. This will make it possible for users with 32-bit
> hardware (who probably mostly uses it for hobby/specialist reasons by
> the time bullseye is released) to continue using it for a few more years
> on a supported linux system.
>
> At DebConf we discussed this for a bit too, where I said I'd take it to
> the debian-live list for some additional feedback.
>
> Here is the list of our current i386 images:
>
> * debian-live-i386-cinnamon
> * debian-live-i386-gnome
> * debian-live-i386-kde
> * debian-live-i386-lxde
> * debian-live-i386-lxqt
> * debian-live-i386-mate
> * debian-live-i386-standard
> * debian-live-i386-xfce
>
> I propose:
> * At the minimum, dropping: cinnamon, gnome and kde
> * Keep at least standard and one of the lighter desktop environments
> (perhaps lxqt? xfce?)
>
> I'm not sure where the best place is to draw the lines, but standard is
> very useful on old hardware since installing a headless/cli-only system
> using a live image is a lot easier on old hardware than installing every
> individual package using dpkg. And it seems worth while having one GUI
> system available too (if only to test things like whether the hardware
> even works on Debian, which I did recently on an old ThinkPad with S3
> graphics).
>
> So, what I'm asking is, how far should we cut back? Is there any
> compelling reason at all to keep any of the 3 installation mediums I
> want to drop? Do we need more than one gui system? And if just one, any
> strong preference (along with reasons?).
>
> -Jonathan
>
> --
> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian Developer - https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋ https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
> ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back.
>
>
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