On Aug 4, 2015 9:40 AM, "Paul W. Frields" <stickster@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> > Making i686 non-release blocking would actually match reality.  None
> > of the Fedora Editions appear at all concerned with i686.  Cloud is
> > demoting[3] i686 from its offering.  Workstation has been fairly
> > ambivalent about it and recommends x86_64.  Server does the same.
> > Given the lack of focus on it, and the fact that the broader community
> > is not testing the development releases for i686, I believe this would
> > be a good first step.
>
> "Ambivalent" is probably understated here.  It's hard to imagine
> people securing i686 hardware these days to run a Workstation
> experience, after all.
>
> > [1] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1247382
> > [2] https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2015-February/208368.html
> > [3] https://fedorahosted.org/cloud/ticket/106
>
> --
> Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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> --
>

Perhaps the best approach, from a community perspective, would be to promote a spin to Edition status and recommend *that* for i686 or low resource desktop use cases.

--Pete