[CentOS-devel] Interest in a 32bit tree of the upcoming CentOS7?

[Ljubomir Ljubojevic]

On 01/10/2014 03:28 PM, Ryan Wagoner wrote:
>
> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 12:37 PM, Andreas Thienemann <andreas at bawue.net
> <mailto:andreas at bawue.net>> wrote:
>
>     Hi,
>
>     I'm in the process of building myself a 32bit tree of the RHEL7 beta as
>     I do have a few x86 machines I am not ready to retire yet.
>
>
> Have you considered converting these machines over to VMs. At one client
> I purchased one new server and migrated 10 legacy servers over to VMware
> ESXi. When I did the math the power savings covered the server in 2 years.
>
> Ryan
>

If you have a company with 40-50 workstations with 32-bit CPU and 1GB 
RAM, how would you provide all 40-50 via VM's? Developing or poor 
countries use what they can, some even import old PC's from developed 
countries. Even in my country there are many people with 32-bit CPU's 
and 512-1024MB RAM. Some even only have 256MB. It works for what they 
need so they do not want to spend their money if they do not have to. 
Maybe you do not know this, but majority of individual Linux users are 
from poor or developing countries, Middle East, Africa and by large Asia 
(India, Indonesia,...). At least I can see that in our FaceBook group 
and you will agree that FaceBook users do not have to have larger IT 
knowledge to use it, like you have to have to use mailing lists, visit 
various forums etc.

Considering that some of my brothers friends use PC's I bought in 2004, 
and replacing capacitors on the MB is cheep and works, with knowledge 
that 32-bit CPU production stopped around 2004 but was still in new PC's 
until ~2006, I am guessing that many will still be working until year 
2020 (I still have some Pentium III/450MHz boards in use as routers, 
working just fine).

So in order to gain emerging "market" (1,6 billion people live under 
$37.5/month or $450/year). Many more can afford used PC, but not the 
brand new one, so I think 32-bit distro is still needed, if we want to 
be on the wave of more massive computer use.

Especially since Windows XP will be EOL and support of newer Windows 
applications will turn to Win7 minimum. That will have WinXP users 
looking for alternative, and that alternative will be (and increasingly 
already is) Linux. But easiest to install is now Debian/Ubuntu. And 
since Debina style is different from RHEL stile, if a user has or 
maintains even one 32-bit PC, he will rather choose Ubuntu for all of 
his system then to use CentOS for 64-bit and Ubuntu for 32-bit PC's.

Considering CentOS 7, I see that it's RAM requirements are mostly the 
same, 1GB RAM. The question is if CentOS 6 would be enough to use on 
32-bit. Since apps are getting newer and newer, I think 32-bit CentOS 7 
will not be as used as 64-bit version, but it will have more of the 
psychological effect when newbies choose what distro to use.


-- 
Ljubomir Ljubojevic
(Love is in the Air)
PL Computers
Serbia, Europe

StarOS, Mikrotik and CentOS/RHEL/Linux consultant