[GTALUG] life expectancy of 32-bit x86 [was Re: Fedora Netinstall] [long]

[Anthony de Boer]

D. Hugh Redelmeier via talk wrote:
>  ...
> So: I don't expect that we're going to see many programs that will
> stop supporting 32-bit.  A greater risk is that 32-bit ports will
> become less tested.  That may reduce reliability.
> 
> Some distros are surely going to drop 32-bit soon.  I would imagine
> that debian won't be one of them.

Debian has already dropped 32-bit PowerPC as a release architecture;
64-bit is still supported.  And I've heard mutterings that i386 is
getting too long in the tooth and that amd64 is very much the core
architecture today.

We're already seeing browsers needing ginormous address space and not
playing nicely on smaller computers with less than four gig in which to
romp.  I'm expecting that 64-bit processors are going to become
increasingly less optional in the desktop and server space, and that
there may be a fork at some point with the full distros focussing on
64-bit and embedded distros being the thing to use on 32-bit hardware.

64-bit ARM has been awfully slow off the mark but is likely to be a big
thing once it gets properly going.  The only reasonable thing I've seen
actually for sale and have personally touched and run is the Solidrun
Macchiatobin.  Decent little board, supports a proper DIMM-load of RAM,
the 10gig SFP slots are overkill for most of us but it has a normal GigE
port too.  I haven't tried video but I've heard reports of people having
luck with a card of the appropriate PCI flavour.

(Technically you can boot arm64 on some Raspberry Pis, but they don't
have enough RAM to make that worth trying.)

-- 
Anthony de Boer