Validity of i686 as a release blocker

[Bill Nottingham]

Paul W. Frields (stickster at 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