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Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 15th, '18, 20:02
by adrianomorselli
Hello to everyone, I was a developer from Uplos, a fork of pclinuxos keeping 32bit support. After a good starter now I give up, I'm alone, no one is interested to help me. But I am interested to help you if you are interesting to support 32bit. If not there is a fork?

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 15th, '18, 23:18
by doktor5000
You may want to have a look at https://www.mageia.org/contribute/

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 15th, '18, 23:29
by morgano
Welcome adrianomorselli :)
If you like, present yourself at viewtopic.php?f=2&t=15&start=750

As in every project more helping hands are welcome :)

Mageia still support 32 bit.

Yes the Contributing page is good, and if you have not found it yet, have a look at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Main_Page , https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Documentation

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 09:27
by adrianomorselli
Thank you for your reply, I have to study your work method first. edit <another thing, package maintainer has to build both 32 and 64bit?>

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 12:04
by doktor5000
adrianomorselli wrote:edit <another thing, package maintainer has to build both 32 and 64bit?>

No, this is done by the build system automatically. You can see submitted builds and results here: http://pkgsubmit.mageia.org/

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 12:10
by xboxboy
Hi adrianomorselli. A few of us still use 32 bit, although I'm not involved in maintaining it. Some of us have old hardware lying around and hate to throw it out while it's still servicable.

The contribute page is very helpful, but I'd suggest joining the mailing list so see and communicate with the developers: IRC is still an option, but like most rooms, I think registration is now required. I'm sure you'll find the a welcoming crew.
Enjoy.

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 12:51
by adrianomorselli
doktor5000 wrote:
adrianomorselli wrote:edit <another thing, package maintainer has to build both 32 and 64bit?>

No, this is done by the build system automatically. You can see submitted builds and results here: http://pkgsubmit.mageia.org/

Ahr, this I known, if I rebuild from 32bit SO, packages are only for 32bit.. But really clear was @xboxboy cit. "I'm not involved in maintaining it (32bit)" . Ok, mageia still support 32bit now and my last question is: can I help you to mantain 32bit or are you planning to end 32bit early?

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 14:47
by doktor5000
adrianomorselli wrote:Ok, mageia still support 32bit now and my last question is: can I help you to mantain 32bit or are you planning to end 32bit early?


Did you have a look for the contribute page linked to above? Yes you can help, but it's not primarily about maintaining 32bit but about maintaining packages. You don't get to do only the 32bit part, maybe 32bit specific bugfixes but you still have to also care for the other architectures.

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 15:37
by Zezinho
adrianomorselli wrote:Ok, mageia still support 32bit now and my last question is: can I help you to maintain 32bit or are you planning to end 32bit early?


There is not end of 32bit support planned. You can see that in the fact all medias are still available in both arches. Of course, less 32 bit users mean less man power, so we have bugs only in 32 bit no one sees or cares, yes your contribution is welcome.

Also, we may stop 32 bit one day, when no contributors use this arch anymore. As example, I for now still use an EeePC 901, a Dell D600, and other laptops which are 32 bit only. Welcome aboard!

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 15:40
by marja
doktor5000 wrote:
adrianomorselli wrote:Ok, mageia still support 32bit now and my last question is: can I help you to mantain 32bit or are you planning to end 32bit early?


Did you have a look for the contribute page linked to above? Yes you can help, but it's not primarily about maintaining 32bit but about maintaining packages. You don't get to do only the 32bit part, maybe 32bit specific bugfixes but you still have to also care for the other architectures.



More precisely: as maintainer of packages, you need to care about all arches that we support.

However, as QA-team member, you can choose to only test 32bit isos and 32bit packages. We are often a bit tight on testers with real 32bit hardware, so if you'd like to help there, see https://wiki.mageia.org/en/QA_Team_portal and certainly read https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Your_first_steps_in_the_QA_team.

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 16th, '18, 18:29
by adrianomorselli
This is good, so you need more testers. I never did it, only rebuild thousand of packages, but I can install on my old dual-core mageia 32bit and test all new packages.

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 17th, '18, 05:28
by davidwhodgins
As a member of the Mageia council, I can state that we have no plans to drop 32 bit support.

We have dropped the 32 bit kde and gnome live iso images, as those desktop managers just do not work well on old
hardware. To replace those, we have added Xfce live iso images (both 32 and 64 bit) in their place.

For the developers, most of the packages are built automatically for all supported architectures. Other then some
additional trouble shooting when a build does work on 64 bit but fails on 32 bit, there is very little extra work, with
the exception of the kernel packages where packaging is more involved.

It does increase the work for the quality assurance team, but as leader of the qa team, I can also state that we are in not
pushing for the dropping of 32 bit packages. There was some discussion of this in the past, but rsync statistics showing the
popularity of the 32 bit iso images ended the consideration of asking the council to drop 32 bit support.

There are some packages such as VirtualBox, where we make no attempt to test them in a 32 bit environment. They just do
not work on such limited hardware.

Keep in mind that most of the people on the qa team no longer have any working 32 bit hardware, so most of the 32 bit testing
involves using installations of the 32 bit versions of Mageia on 64 bit hardware.

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 17th, '18, 08:30
by adrianomorselli
Happy to read your reply and yes, I know that some DE like Kde5 do not work on 32bit, but qt5 packages are needed for applications. Virtualbox works on 32bit but only old version 4.3. Many libs are to be keept on old version for a working 32bit SO.
Next week I will install your xfce iso 32bit

Re: Hi a question about 32bit

PostPosted: Sep 17th, '18, 11:14
by davidwhodgins
You may want to wait a couple of weeks. The live iso images for Mageia 6.1 are currently undergoing qa testing. The primary
purpose of them is to allow installing on cpus newer than what 6.0 iso images can boot on, but they also include all of the
updates released since 6.0, so they are much more stable.

If you'd like to help us test the 6.1 iso images, you could join the qa team.
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Contributing