Paul W. Frields (stickster(a)gmail.com) said:
On Tue, Aug 04, 2015 at 09:47:27AM -0400, Josh Boyer wrote:
[...snip...]
> Perhaps it is time that we evaluate where i686 stands in Fedora more
> closely. For a starting suggestion, I would recommend that we do not
> treat it as a release blocking architecture. This is not the same as
> demotion to secondary architecture status. That has broader
> implications in both buildsys and ecosystem. My suggestion is
> narrowly focused so that builds still proceed as today, but if there
> is something broken for i686 it does not block the release of whatever
> milestone we are pursuing.
>
> (To be clear, I would support a move to secondary arch status for
> i686, but I am not suggesting it at this time.)
So to put a finer point on this, our shipping i686 images depends on a
broader community effort beyond the kernel maintainers in the Fedora
Engineering team. That needs to precisely not mean more heroics on
the part of e.g. QE, rel-eng, etc. I have no idea what the pushback
on this issue is, but I'm sure this thread will tell us. But given
that Fedora is supposed to encourage such community effort, it would
be good to see what people are willing to do to build it.
Here's my perspective as an i686 Fedora user...
I have a box (2009-ish) that's in use as a file/backup server. As such, I don't
spend a lot of time futzing with it - it doesn't run rawhide, it rarely runs
the prereleases until beta or later time. If something breaks, I'll look at
it, send some feedback, update it as necessary, and back off to a working
version. And historically, it *hasn't* broken.
But, if it did break that hard... would I spend a month digging into the
kernel source and bisecting to try and find a fix? Or would I spend the
$100-120 to slap a new motherboard in it and install the x86_64 version?
I'd like to say I'd do the former. But realisitically it's the latter. And I
wonder how much of the i686 Fedora-using community is in the same boat.
Bill