On Fri, 28 Aug 2015 10:49:31 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:
A few things I'd like to clear up
1) This is a decision by Coolo and other contributors involved in releasing openSUSE, not 'SUSE' 2) Therefore, if other contributors feel there is a need to continue making a 32-bit version of Leap, then they can do it 3) That said, Michal and others are making very good practical points why a 32-bit version makes little sense. So far, most of the arguments for keeping a 32-bit version seem to believe running 32-bit in some scenarios has greater benefits than they do in reality. 4) The number of users of 32-bit openSUSE has been declining since as far back as our records can show. Even the 13.2 release which saw an almighty increase in total downloads, all of this growth was in 64-bit users, while 32-bit downloads continued their decline. 5) There is also the impact on our infrastructure to consider. We only have a single pool of Intel hardware on the Build Service and in openQA, responsible for building and testing both 32-bit and 64-bit intel. Not having 32-bit effectively doubles our available hardware for building and testing the distribution, and that's one hell of a good thing. Every time it's crossed your mind lately 'oh, it's taking a while for X to build' or 'why is it taking them so long to release a patch for Y' can probably be blamed on the infrastructure impact of providing a 32-bit version of a distribution for an every declining number of users. Therefore if people do step up to continue making a 32-bit distribution, I'd like to either see them find a way of mitigating the hardware impact of their work, or help us find sponsors willing to provide more hardware for the Build Service and openQA - and I think it's going to be quite hard to convince other organisations to sponsor hardware to support the building and testing of an architecture that's in such a state of decline.
IMO, we should soften the statement: e.g. i586 image may be provided, but only if anyone steps up as the image maintainer, and it'll be provided as a "Port", i.e. without any openQA and other tests performed for the official image. It's important to show the attitude that we're willing to help, not only just throwing away. Takashi -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org