On 07/09/15 08:44, C. Brouerius van Nidek wrote:
Can only speak for myself in this very long discussion. I always detested the Microsoftisch way of commerce that implicated that if you do not get the latest of hardware you are out of using our Microsoft-ware. Reason for me to abandon that company since windows 3.1.1 At home I have now two 586 computers and one 64 bit system (max. memory 2GB). Loosing the use of openSUSE for two thirds of my computers is not an idea I can befriended with. Hope that list-members who find them self in a similar situation will speak up. Assume that a broader discussion should start as the factory list is most probably not read by every SUSE enthusiast. Just try to find out how big the group of 586 owners is. .
For want of finding a suitable place to 'leap' into this discussion, I'll take that penultimate paragraph as my cue. Having only just subscribed to this list I don't have the full thread to reply to individual sections, so here's a big combined braindump: As somebody who still employs a few 32-bit machines myself (indeed, I only have one - my main laptop - that is 64-bit), and as a user of (open)SUSE since 2003, I'll add my own name to the list of those who will be perturbed at the lack of a 32-bit option in the next openSUSE release. Whilst a couple of these machines are running 13.1 and I'd hoped to keep them on Evergreen until that reaches its expiry around the end of next year, I've also seen rumours to the effect that since Leap 42.1 will be an LTS release of sorts, the Evergreen workload would be considerably reduced by declaring that to be the current Evergreen release instead and abandoning 13.1. I've seen no further word on that but I hope that will not be the case. It's true that a small handful of dejected users on this factory mailing list may not seem significant, but to truly gauge the potential user base who will be upset by this we're going to just have to wait for the coming release, and the weeks and months that follow it. Most users of older 32-bit hardware are *less* likely (not unlikely) to be following lists regarding the state of cutting edge features. Indeed, only a small fraction of users of any distro follow mailing lists, forums, subreddits or whatever other sources of their distro's information. The majority only become aware of what's changing when they hear of a new release, go to download it or have already installed it. There's been repeated references to this magic unknown figure representing the current 32-bit openSUSE install base, and many of those pushing for an end to 32-bit support are loyal to Richard Brown's apparent knowledge of this information without knowing what the statistics actually are. Does this have to be a secret, because there seems to be a reluctance to just spit it out? The best clue would be if I quote Richard from earlier in this thread:
There is also the support lifetime of Leap to consider
32bit intel downloads have been declining for openSUSE from 11.4's release in March 2011 (when 32-bit media represented 55% of all openSUSE downloads) to date
By openSUSE 12.3 in March 2013 32-bit downloads had become the minority (40%) and that decline has continued unabated
Remember, 13.2 saw openSUSE's download numbers almost double compared to openSUSE 12.3. The proportion of 32-bit downloads have halved in the same period.
So in March 2013, the proportion of 32-bit downloads was 40%. Whilst overall downloads almost doubled with the 13.2 release, the *proportion* of 32-bit downloads halved. If that had read 'number' or 'total', we could assume that 32-bit had not just halved in number but now represented almost half of that again due to the overall user base doubling, but by saying 'proportion', that implies the percentage of 32-bit for 13.2 was around 20%. Sure, let's give or take a bit and accept that we're looking at a new release in two months from now, one year after 13.2 came out. So we might be looking at 10 to 15% using 32-bit machines come the time of the Leap 42.1 release. openSUSE is assumed to be installed on hundreds of thousands of machines/devices worldwide. Ten to fifteen percent of those is still an enormous figure! openSUSE is going to be amongst the first major distros to make this move. Once the first news items and reviews come out for Leap 42.1, and when this segment of the 95% of regular users who don't follow lists and the like get wind of the fact that they can no longer install their preferred distribution, I expect a degree of backlash. I'm not predicting a riot, but my recommendation would be to be up-front about this change in the press releases, don't try and brush it under the carpet. I know this info is freely available already but I don't think so many are actually aware yet of what is a significant change to come. Speak to the marketing peeps and put a very clear line in the release statements saying that 32-bit is dropped because of the significant drain on resources that it would engender. If 13.1 Evergreen is going to stick to its original course, direct 32-bit users to that and be clear about it. It's nonetheless surprising that this architecture is being dropped so soon. Take a look at the options in /usr/src/packages/RPMS/. (open)SUSE is now chasing the 64-bit ARM market, has support for ppc, sparc and more. All of these which add up to perhaps a couple of percent of the market. Sure, 64-bit ARM is growing and in two years from now, nearing the end of the Leap 42 lifecycle, it might be considerably more relevant. But this is an odd offering overall. openSUSE is effectively saying 'you can run the world's most popular architecture, or take your pick from among a bunch of obscure ones hardly anybody uses, but you want the world's number two most used architecture? No, sorry.' Essentially, any colour you like so long as it's green. I'm grateful to Takashi Iwai for some of his thoughtful comments, including his considerations of the likelihood of future kernel support. Look at i386 support which was only finally dropped by the kernel quite recently. That was a technology around twenty-five years old, but even 486 and early 586 users had almost disappeared off the radar by the time it was finally abandoned. On the contrary, we know that 32-bit machines are still everywhere, whether that be in slow-moving corporate environments or hobbyist gadgets. (Coincidental anecdote: this very weekend I was taking a rubbish sack down to the communal bins of my block here in France. I bumped into the lady who runs the building's syndicate, an extremely rich woman who inherited a large part of this majestic old building and hence several apartments of hundreds of square metres from her father; very pleasant nonetheless. As she returned upstairs, I noticed the box she'd deposited in the bin. An HP laptop computer. Expecting it to be top-of-the-range, I was nosey and had a look at the labels attached to the brand new box. Very strange. A sales receipt indicated it was bought in July this year. Yet it had an Intel Core Duo @2.0GHz and was preloaded with Vista 32-bit. I know France is a bit behind the times with some things but I have no idea where and why she could have bought this!) Unlike her, I live in by far and away the smallest 'apartment' (box) in this building in the city centre; we have therefore a nice mix of rich and poor. I'm most definitely in the latter group! So my own reasons for still having 32-bit machines is because to me they're very much still current and usable, and I can't afford to splash out continually for upgrades. It so happens that another contributor to this thread lives just up the road from here, literally, and runs older machines for the same reason. As a long-time openSUSE user, I've read a good number of articles, comments and threads in previous years from users in developing nations who say they obtain the distro on disc to install on multiple machines in their communities, and that for them high speed phone or internet connections are either unavailable or unaffordable. It would be logical to assume that people in these regions are likely to have a higher-than-average proportion of older and hence 32-bit machines. Are we no longer caring about this part of the userbase? openSUSE is embarking on its second Asia summit. Were it being held in one of the continent's less developed countries, imagine starting off with a keynote where all 32-bit users were asked to raise their hands, and then asked to leave the summit, because they're no longer relevant. I've read much of the reasoning for going 64-bit only, and I can see the predicament. There are some reasoned voices in here who have laid out some of the facts and the difficulties faced with continuing 32-bit. But there are also a number of very defensive and at times rather unpleasant folk of whom I'm not sure of their motivations other than sticking the knife in to those less fortunate than themselves; a sort of baying group of bullies. Granted, until now I've never followed the Factory list, but I've rarely seen such a disconnect between *some* of the openSUSE 'contributors' (broadly speaking) and regular users. Given that one of Linux's long-standing strong selling points has been that it runs very well on older hardware and allows you to keep such machines in use, for the sake of three more years of support for up to 15% of the user base, I think openSUSE should continue to offer 32-bit, and if it's a question of money and build machines, SUSE ought to donate some servers to the cause. Yes, they really should. There may be a complete separation of SUSE from openSUSE but still the former should contribute more to support the latter, if not financially then by way of hardware donations. If they want to achieve this virtuous circle of TW > SUSE > openSUSE (maybe it's a triangle then) they should be prepared to help out more in the regular user community, because that's where the interest for Tumbleweed and hence SUSE additions will come from later on. Alas, they've already abandoned 32-bit themselves with SLE12 so it seems they're bloody-minded on this issue. And if you don't think there'll be much of a migration effect from disgruntled users, actually I'd be inclined to agree. Many people don't want to give up on a distro they've become faithful to and will only voice their disapproval when it's too late, and in places (comments on blogs of articles of press releases) where nobody's listening. But some will silently depart, perhaps imparting a final flourish of anger in some unknown corner of the Internet. There are other choices. The recent Mint 17.2 release (http://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=2890) offers 32-bit and provides support until 2019 (along with a stable KDE 4 version). I'm seriously considering it for at least one machine I administer. My folks, living on a UK basic pension, have a perfectly working 13.1 32-bit system which still fulfils all their rather limited computing needs. Neither they nor I really have the money to buy a new machine that doesn't even seem necessary from their perspective. It may be Mint for them. I began assembling that box around 2006, upgrading bits over the years, but at that time of the initial build, whilst 64-bit existed, there were still regular reports, articles and comments about how certain Linux software was not available / packaged for 64-bit. What's more, all the 64-bit hardware cost significantly more, so I went for 32-bit. Not long before, a PC magazine had published a big article about the folly of 64-bit, and how it would be many many years before we could seriously abandon 32-bit. I bought into that notion. Last year, a couple of friends were fed up with their Windows PC which had slowed to a crawl in typical style. Before I could even espouse the virtues of Linux which would restore their hardware to a zippy state, they'd already bought a new PC with Windows 8, which they quickly came to hate, and which had soon slowed to an equal speed. They were going to simply dump the old one until I offered it a new home. I was running oS 12.3 on a Pentium III 1.0GHz with the RAM maxed out at 1.5GB until just recently. Slow but it worked fine; performed a useful role as an Internet and music station in my old shared flat. This machine my friends gave me, which they only assembled in *2009*, is hence a big 'upgrade', being a P4 3.0GHz with 2GB RAM. It works very nicely as my new music production machine with AVLinux and Xfce, but it's also 32-bit. One of the last generation boards and CPUs before the 64-bit models. Even my one 64-bit machine is a 2007 model Dell laptop which I bought secondhand (though barely used) two years ago. To me, that's 'current'! I have little financial means but by reusing such 'old' gear I can have myself a nice little setup for doing my music and other multiple computing tasks. Buying two new or secondhand cheap 64-bit machines for myself and my folks, even two crappy noisy ones, is just not an option at present. I have a 2008 feature phone and a digital camera from 2003. That's life. So to summarize, I think it's just a bit too soon. One more 32-bit release with three years' support would have hit it just right in my opinion. I probably won't be abandoning the geeko, but for the first time in twelve years as a disciple, I'm seeing some arrogance in the decision-making here that I think is rather too dismissive. At a time when openSUSE is desperately trying to show it's still relevant, it's simultaneously dismissing the second-largest architectural chunk of its users. Not a great move. gumb -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org