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Debian to drop most architecturesDebian to drop most architecturesPosted Mar 14, 2005 20:52 UTC (Mon) by alspnost (guest, #2763)Parent article: Debian proposes dropping most architectures
Well, tentative or not, if this goes ahead, it's a good thing. Let's leave the "support every architecture" thing to NetBSD, and stick to targeting the architectures that represent the overwhelming majority of the userbase.
I wonder whether Gentoo should do the same as well. I mean, Gentoo is a great, increasingly popular, but small Linux flavour, and you have to wonder how many people out there actually use it on MIPS, HPPA etc. If focusing on the "big 3" or "big 4" actually helped to use the resources better, and to make releases easier and quicker to achieve, then I'm all for it.
We've reached a situation where supporting the niches brings too much of a cost to the masses. Doubtless some people will see this as a great shame, but in the end, practicality is going to have to win out.
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Debian to drop most architectures Posted Mar 14, 2005 21:12 UTC (Mon) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link] There is so many distribution for the 'masses', what benefit is there to have one more ? One the other hand, distributions for the less used architectures are scarse and Debian is a great resource here.
Debian to drop most architectures Posted Mar 15, 2005 4:17 UTC (Tue) by yodermk (subscriber, #3803) [Link] I guess the difference between Gentoo and Debian is that Gentoo is not "held up" for years while waiting for something to get fixed on an obscure architecture. The "stability flag" of each package (stable, testing, unstable) is separate for each architecture supported by Gentoo. So a package can be stable on x86 and testing on AMD64, or testing on x86 and unstable on IA64.
When a package is deemed "ready" for any given arch, it is moved to stable for that arch. As long as Gentoo has maintainers for any given architecture, especially if they're not likely to want to maintain more popular archs, it should be retained.
Gentoo's archs Posted Mar 15, 2005 10:10 UTC (Tue) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link] Very good points about the Gentoo archs. There's another to be made inthis context, however, that being that even the various main Gentoo archs aren't "release locked" to each other. That is, each arch can release on its own schedule. In practice, Gentoo x86 sets the main release schedule and the other archs normally target the same schedule, but there's nothing saying it /has/ to be that way. The individual archs can release as they see fit -- it's only the benefit of the larger PR draw of the coordinated releases that keeps most of the others (by choice) to the same schedule. An example is my own arch, amd64. Where Gentoo main, that is x86, went from four quarterly releases in 2004, 2004.0-2004.3, to a semi-annual release cycle for 2005, 2005.0 and 2005.1, amd64 had originally planned to stay with the four release schedule. As it so happens, a release-stopping hiccup with 2005.0 (on amd64) has it delayed to only now getting close to formal release (I believe there was a similar one for x86, but haven't tracked it as closely so don't know its current status, and with a 6-month window, it's still safely within window and will be for some time yet), now, in mid-March, which means they'll likely only get three release snapshots out this year, but anyway... Of course, the other even BIGGER difference is the emphasis placed on releases. With Gentoo, "releases" are fairly stable and well tested snapshots of the living release tree taken at a specific time, with any changes necessary as discovered during testing, with binary packages available and designed to be convenient starting points for a new install. Once a Gentoo installation is accomplished, the system is designed for more or less constant updating as the packages become available and marked either stable (arch) or unstable (~arch), as chosen by the local installation admin. Other than occasional profile updates where somewhat larger changes may be instituted (a switch from gcc-3.3 to 3.4, as the default, or from a default 2.4 to 2.6 kernel and headers), if said changes are considered disruptive on a normal install and therefore likely profile masked, the system is designed to be kept up to date on a more or less weekly basis, daily being possible for those that want it. Even profile changes are generally less hectic than release upgrades on most binary targeted distributions, where almost the entire system changes at once. With Gentoo, once installed, there's really little reason to worry about releases at all, because the updates are done on a routine basis, not as part of a massive release update. That is of course one of the reasons I like the Gentoo system. Duncan
Gentoo's archs Posted Mar 15, 2005 15:53 UTC (Tue) by jdv (subscriber, #712) [Link] There's another to be made in this context, however, that being that even the various main Gentoo archs aren't "release locked" to each other. That is, each arch can release on its own schedule.Imho, that is more or less what is now being proposed for debian. Well, except for the four or so most important archs, which remain locked.
Gentoo's archs Posted Mar 15, 2005 18:14 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link] check again, the secondary archs will get 'snapshot' releases, not full releases with security support.
there's a huge difference between the two.
Gentoo's archs Posted Mar 15, 2005 21:25 UTC (Tue) by jdv (subscriber, #712) [Link] Right, I misread -- I assumed that those snapshot releases would be more like real releases, but it would seem that is not true. Hopefully, a seperate community effort could pick up the pieces, though, and make a real stable distribution out of it, security support and all.
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