Fedora's 32-bit ARM Xfce Image Demoted While Fedora Workstation AArch64 Gets Promoted

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora's 32-bit ARM Xfce Image Demoted While Fedora Workstation AArch64 Gets Promoted

Issues with Fedora's 32-bit ARM Xfce desktop spin will no longer be treated as a release blocker for the Linux distribution but instead the Fedora Workstation for 64-bit ARM (AArch64) will be considered a blocking issue...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-AArch64-WS-Blocks

[tildearrow]

That’s the logical consequence of GNOME now running on RPis, pinephones etc.

No need for special desktops on lower power devices.

Ugh. Can you shut up?



(long answer) While GNOME may be able to run on low-performance devices, it does not mean it will have a light load. Instead, it will feel heavy.
The user is free to use a different desktop to enhance performance. Come on, enough already GhostOf...



....actually, I just thought your post is not worth enough to stay here. It's gone.

[tildearrow]

Typo:

FESCo also made a Python 2 exception for the Mailman mailing list softwae,

[Anvil]

no one really cares for these other arches in Fedoras. hate to say it but IMO Fedora is going down a downward spiral type Distro

[Britoid]

no one really cares for these other arches in Fedoras. hate to say it but IMO Fedora is going down a downward spiral type Distro

There's a bit of love for the ARM versions for the Pis, but the Fedora team have expressed they're not interested in device-specific images (which is a good thing).

[CommunityMember]

(long answer) While GNOME may be able to run on low-performance devices, it does not mean it will have a light load. Instead, it will feel heavy.
The user is free to use a different desktop to enhance performance.

And Fedora desktop users on 32-bit ARM devices will still have the option to run their chosen desktop, including Xfce. The change here is that being able to create a Xfce spin (and then pass testing) will not be considered a blocker for release, but that if it is not ready one may need to install a minimal image (or another desktop if one is not capable of using the cli) to install Xfce packages if the Workstation WG is not ready at release time.

Given the limited resources for testing spins (and while there are vocal proponents of the Xfce spin, they rarely seem to step up to commit to do the extensive (and timely) testing required in the WG), removing this as a blocker criteria is likely the right choice (arguably the only rational choice).

64-bit ARM desktop, on the other hand, does deserve promotion to being a release criteria, as those are far more likely to be the choices of people moving forward (while one *can* still choose to purchase 32-bit ARM SoCs, and they are certainly the right choice for certain specific targets (I have a number of 32-bit ARM devices running, but none of them with any desktop installed at all (the cli rules!)), the price of 64-bit ARM devices is now sufficiently low that the future is 64-bit). Like it or not, Fedora, given its limited resources, is more about looking at the future targets (and sometimes the bleeding edge), and not about supporting every possible legacy piece of kit out there in a specific spin (you might actually have to install what you want after the fact).

[lowlands]

no one really cares for these other arches in Fedoras. hate to say it but IMO Fedora is going down a downward spiral type Distro

Except for me as I do care for Fedora's ARMv7 flavor Last weekend I installed it on a Cubietruck and it's working great as a DNS, DHCP and TFTP server.

Don't really understand the "downward spiral" thing. Preferences aside, Fedora 31 works well for my use case and I look forward Fedora 32 with kernel 5.{6,7}, Mesa 20, GNOME 3.36, LibreOffice 6.4 and all the other goodies it comes with

[skeevy420]

Don't really understand the "downward spiral" thing. Preferences aside, Fedora 31 works well for my use case and I look forward Fedora 32 with kernel 5.{6,7}, Mesa 20, GNOME 3.36, LibreOffice 6.4 and all the other goodies it comes with

They've been cutting back on spins available, architectures available, etc. It gives the appearance that they don't have the manpower they once had to maintain all that they want to maintain. It's like when a random business starts cutting employees, hours, and services provided to do whatever they need to do to stay afloat. It gives that downward spiral appearance...at least that's the way I read it...

[Spooktra]

It's sad to see what Fedora has become. Back when it was just Red Hat, it was fantastic, probably the best distro, especially with the Ximian Desktop, those were the days. Then when Fedora was announced, I remember reading an article on a Linux review site, where the author said something to the effect of "I just hope Fedora isn't meant as a perpetually beta test bed for main Red Hat releases".

The man was incredibly prescient.

[Guest]

They've been cutting back on spins available, architectures available, etc. It gives the appearance that they don't have the manpower they once had to maintain all that they want to maintain. It's like when a random business starts cutting employees, hours, and services provided to do whatever they need to do to stay afloat. It gives that downward spiral appearance...at least that's the way I read it...

Fedora is focused on fully libre OSS, while Debian and Ubuntu are friendly also towards proprietary Linux software (though it's not in main archives). That makes Fedora less interesting for many applications and users. Basically, Fedora is interesting only to "Libre OSS purists".