Phase out 32bit ppc due to bugfix and maintenance burden

[Al Dunsmuir]

On Friday, May 16, 2014, 11:27:28 AM, David Aquilina wrote:
> We've disabled ppc for rawhide/Fedora 21.

> Ultimately the time for a remix would have been back in Fedora 18, when
> we first stopped creating PPC installer images and stated that MacPPC
> systems would no longer be supported.  It was discussed, but no action
> was taken by the community.

Sometimes  it  takes  a  while for folks to act, or for opportunity to
knock.  I  came  into  the  ppc32  world  as  a  result of interest in
supporting older video hardware on x86 32-bit and 64-bit.

> Old power hardware in general is problematic to support. Even old PPC64
> hardware such as the YDL PowerStation can't boot current versions of
> Fedora due to firmware bugs.

Installing and booting Mac G5s in 64-bit mode also seems problematic.

> Development is active on modern PPC64 and the upcoming PPC64LE
> platforms, as we're a small team that's where our focus is.

Anyone  who  has  been  talking  about continuing (or improving) ppc32
support in any way wants ppc64 to be hurt by a separate ppc64 effort.

I  would submit that we are an even smaller group of people who happen
to have a different focus, and would like the freedom to make our best
shot  at  making ppc32 useful to us. There may even be a few folks who
will choose to contribute to both efforts.

I  am concerned when we are still in the early stages of talking about
this,  and  there  is already a post in the fedora kernel mailing list
that strips the *ability* to build ppc32. That seems excessive.

Does  the  ppc64 team now object to using *any* Fedora resources (such
as this mailing list) to talk about ppc32?

Al