Fedora Will Soon Decide The Fate Of Its i686 Kernel

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora Will Soon Decide The Fate Of Its i686 Kernel

The Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) made another round of decisions on Friday concerning Fedora 27 and the future...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-Deciding-i686-Fate

[garegin]

I dont understand. You can't run a 64 bit kernel on a 32 bit CPU. So this means that you can't run Fedora on 32 bit machines, right?

[kenjo]

I dont understand. You can't run a 64 bit kernel on a 32 bit CPU. So this means that you can't run Fedora on 32 bit machines, right?

Yes. I still have a perfectly working eee 901 that I use when I need a simple monitoring pc. easier to have a screen and keyboard than setup a headless raspberry pi if you don't have to.

But if 32 bit support is going away its going to be a security nightmare running older distros on that

https://www.asus.com/Laptops/Eee_PC_901/

[GdeR]

I dont understand. You can't run a 64 bit kernel on a 32 bit CPU. So this means that you can't run Fedora on 32 bit machines, right?

You can't run Fedora 64-bit on 32-bit machines, but you can still run Fedora 32-bit on them, because Fedora still offers 32-bit kernels/packages/images. The article says the 32-bit kernels/images will probably be dropped in the future, so you will only be able to install 32-bit packages on 64-bit machines (when I say packages I mean all the userspace software, so the kernel is excluded).

[Awesomeness]

I still don't understand what the fuss is all about. With Fedora maintaining all those 32bit packages anyway, a single additional package makes no difference. Just declare it "not release blocking".

[RahulSundaram]

I still don't understand what the fuss is all about. With Fedora maintaining all those 32bit packages anyway, a single additional package makes no difference. Just declare it "not release blocking".

Kernel isn't an ancillary package. It is a very high level of maintenance to keep up with it. "Not release blocking" isn't enough of a policy. There is work beyond releases.

[starshipeleven]

Yes. I still have a perfectly working eee 901 that I use when I need a simple monitoring pc. easier to have a screen and keyboard than setup a headless raspberry pi if you don't have to.

But if 32 bit support is going away its going to be a security nightmare running older distros on that

https://www.asus.com/Laptops/Eee_PC_901/

I heard that there are still quite a bit of distros that have 32bit support and won't drop it in the forseeable future, like say Puppy Linux (that is also best for crap hardware as it runs from RAM).

[starshipeleven]

You can't run Fedora 64-bit on 32-bit machines, but you can still run Fedora 32-bit on them, because Fedora still offers 32-bit kernels/packages/images. The article says the 32-bit kernels/images will probably be dropped in the future, so you will only be able to install 32-bit packages on 64-bit machines (when I say packages I mean all the userspace software, so the kernel is excluded).

If there is no more a 32-bit fedora kernel, then you can't boot Fedora on 32-bit systems at all, so the first sentence is misleading here.

[GdeR]

If there is no more a 32-bit fedora kernel, then you can't boot Fedora on 32-bit systems at all, so the first sentence is misleading here.

What exactly is misleading? 32-bit kernels are STILL maintained. My sentence refers to two different cases: now and what will probably happen in the future. You can still boot Fedora on 32-bit machines for now. No definitive decision has been made yet.

[starshipeleven]

What exactly is misleading? 32-bit kernels are STILL maintained.

well no duh.
I just think it was not obvious enough that you were talking of now (also because it kinda not makes sense to state the current situation, we all know Fedora runs on 32bit, if the article is about Fedora pondering dropping 32-bit then it's kind of logical).