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Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

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Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#11

Post by freeone3000 »

HDMI_Cable wrote: post #3
Mathnerd314 wrote: post #2

They're considering dropping i386, which is interesting. Does anyone know more about that?

I think it may be because the software packages for i386 are closed-source, but don't quote me on that.

It's because in 2021, i386 processors are obsolescent. The last non-amd64 processor that ran x86 is the Pentium 4E from 2004, a 17-year-old machine. The packages will still be available as long as there's a maintainer, but it's not worth packaging a full debian release for such a small and shrinking portion of the userbase.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#12

Post by lmm »

Mathnerd314 wrote: post #2

They're considering dropping i386, which is interesting. Does anyone know more about that?

I'm guessing that fewer maintainers are running i386 to the point where i386 is not "tested by default". So they're asking porters to step up and take over testing/maintaining packages for i386 if they want the i386 releases to continue.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#13

Post by mbreese »

edoceo wrote: post #9
gautamcgoel wrote: post #4

Debian is an amazing project. I love how it's so fundamental but doesn't call attention or hype to itself. It's used by millions but doesn't try to be sexy or glamorous. Even the website is minimal.

Also, it "just works". It's so reliable that I almost forget it's there. 10+ years in production and not once an OS/distro bang-up.

As an outsider, it's not the reliability of the software that is amazing to me. It's the governance and management of the project. The distro has managed to be amazingly consistent and stable for years. But the reason for this is how the project is run. It's hard to do that for so long with minimal drama and they deserve tons for kudos for that effort.

Like some others, where CentOS was my go-to distro, I've started moving over to Debian as my distro of choice when I can. Thus far, I've been very happy with this choice.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#14

Post by passthejoe »

I just installed yesterday. I tried an in-place upgrade from Buster, but that didn't work, so I did a new install. So far, so good. It's an interesting time to be running Bullseye because it includes GNOME 3.38, which is what you get in Fedora 33 and Ubuntu 20.10.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#15

Post by edoceo »

mbreese wrote: post #13
edoceo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, it "just works". It's so reliable that I almost forget it's there. 10+ years in production and not once an OS/distro bang-up.

As an outsider, it's not the reliability of the software that is amazing to me. It's the governance and management of the project. The distro has managed to be amazingly consistent and stable for years. But the reason for this is how the project is run. It's hard to do that for so long with minimal drama and they deserve tons for kudos for that effort. Like some others, where CentOS was my go-to distro, I've started…

100%. That management makes it happen.

I think we all (who can afford it) should send them a few bucks.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#16

Post by lmm »

freeone3000 wrote: post #11
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it may be because the software packages for i386 are closed-source, but don't quote me on that.

It's because in 2021, i386 processors are obsolescent. The last non-amd64 processor that ran x86 is the Pentium 4E from 2004, a 17-year-old machine. The packages will still be available as long as there's a maintainer, but it's not worth packaging a full debian release for such a small and shrinking portion of the userbase.

> The last non-amd64 processor that ran x86 is the Pentium 4E from 2004, a 17-year-old machine.

Atom CPUs without x86_64 support were released up until 2013.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#17

Post by walrus01 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #11
HDMI_Cable wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it may be because the software packages for i386 are closed-source, but don't quote me on that.

It's because in 2021, i386 processors are obsolescent. The last non-amd64 processor that ran x86 is the Pentium 4E from 2004, a 17-year-old machine. The packages will still be available as long as there's a maintainer, but it's not worth packaging a full debian release for such a small and shrinking portion of the userbase.

The Intel Core Duo (such as found in the 1st generation Intel macbook pro) from 2006) is not 64-bit capable.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#18

Post by magicalhippo »

I've been using Debian or Debian derived distros for quite a while, everything from straight up Debian on various servers, Armbian for my SBC's, to my secondary PC running Kubuntu and later KDE Neon.

For me as a more casual Linux user, it's great as it essentially "just works" and I don't have to invest a great deal of time to fiddle with auxiliary things.

However, if I could get one wish, it was to ditch the codenames. As someone who's not on the dev mailing list, I find it so confusing when people reference the Debian version just by codename and have to search just about every time to make sure I understand what's what.

Regardless, a big thanks to the contributors!

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#19

Post by zackmorris »

Debian is my favorite distro for web dev, but, MIPS is also near and dear to my heart since I learned its hardware architecture in college.

I view MIPS as the simplest possible instruction set that satisfies most of the modern scalability constraints (RISC, short pipeline, etc). It will likely be replaced by something like ARM which also incorporates instruction compression for basically free (since memory latency matters more than computing power more with each passing year).

So I'm sad to see them remove MIPS support since I think next-gen 16+ core processors will probably use it. But, after reviving more failing projects than I can count, it's not a huge deal to use old commits to re-implement functionality. Most of that work is probably around stuff like endianness issues, atomic instructions, protected memory, caching, etc etc etc. If it helps them to set it aside for now, great, but I hope that MIPS support returns someday is all I'm saying.

Re: Debian 11 “bullseye” freeze started

#20

Post by hlieberman »

zackmorris wrote: post #19

Debian is my favorite distro for web dev, but, MIPS is also near and dear to my heart since I learned its hardware architecture in college. I view MIPS as the simplest possible instruction set that satisfies most of the modern scalability constraints (RISC, short pipeline, etc). It will likely be replaced by something like ARM which also incorporates instruction compression for basically free (since memory latency ma…

MIPS (Little Endian) and MIPS64 (LE) are still fully supported architectures!
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