On 01/07/2016 21:05, Bryan Quigley wrote:
Can you elaborate on what specific systems you are purchasing today
that use 32-bit x86 (I believe the only vendors ever were AMD, Intel
and VIA)?
The chipsets are mostly AMD and Intel as you've stated. The vendor I
purchase from mostly is iEi. They have a huge variety of form factors
and chipsets, mostly AMD and Intel. Popular 32-bit systems include
Intel Atom and AMD Geode.
I have used some weird ones like the eBox that uses the DM&P Vortex86DX
CPU, but you can no longer run Ubuntu on this anyway, because the
architecture is too old.
Also what is your usual expected EOL for these systems?
I'll have to find out about EOL, but they'll continue to produce the
systems for as long as the chips are available. So I guess the question
is rather for how much longer AMD and Intel will produce 32-bit chipsets.
In the field these systems can keep running for 10+ years even in harsh
environments because they are designed for industrial conditions.
However, once installed the operating system is seldom upgraded as its
usually pretty hard to get to the devices and upgrades often bring
unwanted problems, e.g. incompatibilities, removed packages, dropped
support for devices or changes to the file system structure. So I only
use LTS editions and allow for security updates, at least that provides
3-5 years of OS security.
Dropped support for older architectures and hardware is a problem I run
into more and more. Even things like dropping support for the
alternative install CD created problems for me. I have considered
switching to another flavor of Linux that still supports older
architectures, but the convenience of Ubuntu makes it hard to switch.
The new Snappy packages might make life a little easier again, but I
haven't tried it yet. Fortunately, embedded systems seldom require GUI
front-ends and web interfaces are preferred, so Server Edition still
provides everything I need.
Please don't forget the Edubuntu projects. Dropping support for 32-bit
PCs could severely affect many of these community upliftment projects.
Regards
Charl
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