"Therefore, we're planning on not releasing most of the minor architectures starting with etch. They will be released with sarge, with all that implies (including security support until sarge is archived), but they would no longer be included in testing." Read more here.
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They'll be dropped from testing/stable but they'll still be in unstable, with snapshot releases.
...to "Debian proposes dropping most architectures" which is distinctly better.
Reading the comments there, as well as the article is probably sensible.
I am not sure what the major architectures are supposed to be. I guess Intel is there, perhaps Power, maybe SPARC... and then? Itanium? PA-RISC? MIPS? Alpha? (in order of dead-ity)
And it's only a proposal. Nothing is carved in stone yet.
"Note that this plan makes no changes to the set of supported release
architectures for sarge, but will take effect for testing and unstable
immediately after sarge's release..."
"We project that applying these rules for etch will reduce the set of
candidate architectures from 11 to approximately 4 (i386, powerpc, ia64
and amd64"
As you can see this will affect unstable as well, and future releases will be for the 4 major architectures noted.
K7/Pentium Optimized builds 
Or at least the most common.. i mean, debian can make
and announce a poll so we can vote the most popular CPUs
used by everyone.. then provide trees built for that..
Cheers!
I guess you meant IA-64. But my question mark in the title is not related to this minor spelling mistake. No, it's to express my surprise at IA-64 (AKA Itanium) being listed as a supported arch. What a crop of crappola.
Is this wise? SPARC is still availible and widely used, IA-64 has become a very 'iffy' subject. Do they expect OpenSolaris to make that much of an impact?
It makes sense when you think of the politics, which chip company's been supporting Linux more, etc. Besides, IA-64 may eventually dominate after all - think of how long Windows NT languished with few customers.
I wonder what this will mean for CE devices. AFAIK all the Linux distros that will run on Compaq iPaq's and other pda's capable of running it are debian based things.
I guess busybox will get a little more busy.
> K7/Pentium Optimized builds
> Or at least the most common.. i mean, debian can make
> and announce a poll so we can vote the most popular CPUs
> used by everyone.. then provide trees built for that..
Well,
First of all, the actual performance gaim would't pay the extra effort...
Second, you already can do it "gentoo-style" using the apt-build command.
I for one welcome this idea, if this is going to bring more up-to-date packages to Debian.
"Architectures that are no longer being considered for stable releases are not going to be left out in the cold ... the ftpmasters also intend to provide porter teams with the option of releasing periodic (or not-so-periodic) per-architecture snapshots of unstable."
...is what I was refering to. I don't fully understand exactly what is proposed, but it looks like the minor architectures will get unstable releases.
So Eugenia, now your digging for negative open source news. Excellent journalism.
I'm getting sick of these crappy sensationalistic headlines, which are only half true, if they are true at all. As mentioned earlier, Debian is NOT dropping most architectures. It is only a proposition. Therefore, the headline is FALSE.
"As mentioned earlier, Debian is NOT dropping most architectures. It is only a proposition. Therefore, the headline is FALSE."
If you have been following Debian for a while and looking at the people who signed on to this "proposal", this looks more lika an announcement rather than a proposal.
This concerns our company, specifically me, because I have 4 UltraSparc servers that host mission critical databases and mirrors. As mentioned somewhere in the debian-devel thread, running unstable on it is not an option.
All of you Eugenia haters need to calm down! Okay sure, some of you disagree with the headline wording, so f**king what! Don't go off and start being a prick/bitch about it. I'm seriously getting sick and tired of reading these comments only to find that it's only a bunch of people spitting out negative bullshit.
Eugenia, I can safely say that I am greatful for all of your work. Regardless of my personal opinion on your postings, I respect other people's opinions and yours.
Now, please stop all the hating and say something constructive in a mature sense.
Thank you.
You think OSNEWS headline is bad, check this out:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/03/14/debian_reduced/
> K7/Pentium Optimized builds
Optimized builds are like putting red stripes down the side of your car. They give you a placebo speed-up effect. The myth about optimized builds being faster has been going around since the days when Mandrake used it as their main marketing gimmick. There was no real truth in it then, just as there isn't now.
For some packages, there is an advantage in compiling the packages to take advantage of special instructions (SSE for example), but most will determine whether to use these at runtime, and the others can be compiled when necessary by the user, rather than recompiling the whole OS.
I use MythTV on Debian, and to be honest I haven't noticed much difference in speed or processor utilization from when I used it on Gentoo. In fact, most speed increases in Gentoo are due to leaving out build options, which often comes back to bite the user.
ah but the differences is we expect more truth here not sensationalism
the register is decent for news, but one of their "shticks" is partly true but atention getting and often humourus headlines
They are light hearted and humorus mostly
It seesm as of late Eugina is trying some kind of serious smear campain
which is sad because I generally like the service OSNews provides. I liek followign all the OS Projects. So this recent spat distresses me.
Can I file a bug report asking her to drop it as a feature request for osnew.com?
The comment referred to in the subject is off topic - can we have it moderated down? Didn't think so.
As for dropping archs in Debian: Contact the developers to let them know how popular the archs they're planning on dropping are. It's a question of resources and encouragement.
I don't think SPARC will end up being dropped. There are serious problems with it at the moment and this proposal recognises that. However, sparc will still be in sarge, and there's plenty of time for the problems to be fixed to ensure it gets into etch. If you look at the debian-sparc list, the general consensus is one of positive action, rather than resignation.
From todays Front Page OS-NEWS:
PC Resurrection with Debian
InfoWorld: What's so bad about the GPL?
LugRadio interview with KDE devel Aaron Seigo
Red Hat Secures Spot in OS Pantheon
MusikCube: A No-Nonsense Music Player
Plenty of Positive Open Source News there.
As for Headlines being " crappy sensationalistic headlines, which are only half true, if they are true at all.", this is called journalism. Its a sorry state of affairs, and I don;t approve, but I have resigned myself to it being the way things are.
Back on Topic, does this mean that Debian will be able to speed up its release times and have Stable not quite so 'out of date' ?
Its a proposal. Read the damn article before you post your nonsense here Eugenia!
This is a comment from the article:
" Article tweaked
(Posted Mar 14, 2005 21:16 UTC (Mon) by subscriber corbet)
Just for the record: I've changed the title of the article and (slightly) the text to better reflect the fact that it refers to a proposal, not an adopted policy. My apologies for the first version, which wasn't so clear on that."
By the time Debian releases a new version all packages are already stone age old. Just go to http://www.netbsd.org