End of 32-bit support?

[Gordon Messmer]

On 01/21/2015 03:39 AM, Rex Dieter wrote:
> Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>
>> and ignores the fact the i386 is
>> a multilibbed/~arched archecture of the x86_64.
>
> Good point, the multilib part of the issue is interesting... and an
> important one too.

Not really.  The proposal, if it were made and accepted, neither of 
which have actually happened, would only affect the availability of an 
installer and kernel for i686.  That's the only thing that would change. 
  The x86_64 release would continue to have 32-bit application support.

The proposal is being considered because there really isn't anyone 
testing stuff on i686 machines, and problems that affect those machines 
take a long time to fix because the maintainers don't have hardware on 
which to test, verify, diagnose, and fix those problems.  Making it a 
secondary arch would communicate that the responsibility for finding and 
fixing problems that only affect i686 machines rests with the users who 
have that hardware, which is realistically where it already is.

Making the 32 bit release a secondary arch would essentially be nothing 
more than being honest about the state of that release.  Developers and 
maintainers are not using 10+ year old hardware.