i386 installer CDs are named improperly

Too late in the cycle to consider this for Natty, it does need to be release noted though.

Have added it to Oneiric's list, we need to do this change over early in the cycle.

The "i386" in the image name is the architecture name. Is it better to have different names for the CDs and the architecture in the archive, than to have everything named consistently but leave the confusion regarding the supported CPU?

Isn't this best left as-is, and just make sure we use better terms to identify them in the user-facing documentation?

> These won't install onto i386 machines since the release of Maverick

That's not true at all - they haven't installed onto i386 machines since *LONG* before maverick (I could be wrong, but I don't think Ubuntu was ever installable on a true i386 machine). But we don't relabel the archive when the baseline moves.

Just in case that ever actually gets touched (I'm not suggesting that we should), can we rename "amd64" to "x86-64" then as well? It's not less confusing than i386, given that it runs perfectly fine on most non-AMD Intel machines these days.

We won't be changing the image names - they match the dpkg architecture name, which is fixed. I'm happy to consider improvements in wording of the HTML descriptions of the images; feel free to make specific suggestions there.

Howdy,
  To Steve Langasek, the change took place in Maverick. I have a Via C3 based thin client that I use as a samba server and to demonstrate Ubuntu. The release notes for Maverick say "With 10.10 we have also dropped support for i586 and lower processors, as well as i686 processors without cmov support. ". I can say for sure that Lucid and below worked fine for me on the VIA. So, I don;t know about actual 386 machines.

To Colin Watson, that makes sense to me. I guess I should do 2 things. See if there is somewhere I can request Debian to make that change. And, I should write some text for you. I am not sure where this text would go. Perhaps in the Linux Kernel section of the release notes. I expect you want this short. I would put something like:

 Intel/AMD/Via architecture note:
  i386 refers to processors that have support for the Intel 32 bit instructions. In order to take advantage of certain compiler optimizations, a 686 processor or higher is needed.
 amd64 refers to processors using the 64 bit instruction set extension created by AMD. It is generally known as x86-64.

  I don't know if any SIS or other processors are supported by one or the other of these architectures.

Howdy,
  I want to revise that a bit.

 Intel/AMD/Via architecture note:
  i386 refers to processors that have support for the Intel 32 bit instructions. In order to take advantage of certain compiler optimizations, a 686 processor or higher with cmov support is needed.
 amd64 refers to processors using the 64 bit instruction set extension created by AMD. It is generally known as x86-64.

 I don't know if there is a good place to put it, but another good thing to mention might be that Lucid (10.04) supports lower processors and is a long term support release.

Debian is almost certainly not going to change the architecture name,
and nor are we - it's unrealistic to expect that and so I should save
you time tilting against windmills. The architecture names are, by
design, fixed identifiers, and changing them is a heroically vast amount
of work for very little gain.

Regarding your proposed release note: wouldn't we simply carry over the
existing one from the Maverick notes? It seems clear enough, and
accurate. In any case, I wasn't actually suggesting a change to the
release notes, but rather a change to the descriptions on
http://releases.ubuntu.com/natty/ etc.; the text there was written a
while ago and could probably use an update.

Howdy,
  OK, I'll take your advice. I am not trying to cause trouble. I just wanted it to be clear. I know when Maverick came out, I was one of those who missed the reference in the release notes and I messed up one of my servers and had to rebuild it. The name i386 in the architecture seems pretty obviously to mean that it supports 386 or higher cpus. But, there are more important things to focus on.

  The text in the Maverick note seems fine. It did not look like something that would carry over to Natty. As long as it does, it is good enough for me.

 Intel does not call it EM64T anymore. They use the name Intel 64 for the feature. It does not seem like a good name to me, since it might confuse some people who had Intel 64 bit machines with the older 64 bit architecture. But, it is the right name, so I propose it be used. And there are lots of computers out there that are not 686 processors or higher with cmov support. So, I changed almost all to most computers. I say this because of how many embedded devices there are out there with geode or via processors. Lots of thin clients and firewalls can't run newer versions of Ubuntu. I am not criticizing here. The compiler optimizations were probably worth the move, but it did drop a lot of older computers out as candidates for Ubuntu.

 For the text at http://releases.ubuntu.com/natty/, here is my proposal.

PC (Intel x86) desktop CD
    For most PCs. This includes most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors with 686 cpus or higher with cmov support. This would be most computers that run Microsoft Windows, as well as newer Apple Macintosh systems based on Intel processors. Choose this if you are at all unsure.
64-bit PC (AMD64) desktop CD
    Choose this to take full advantage of computers based on the AMD64 or Intel 64 architecture (e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon, Core 2). If you have a non-64-bit processor made by AMD, or an Intel CPU with IA-64(their older 64 bit technology) support or if you need full support for 32-bit code, use the Intel x86 images instead.

Shouldn't we just rename them 32bit and 64bit respectively? Is there something I'm missing?

Howdy,
 Something like that would seem to be a good idea. But, it was
explained that the names come from the debian names an won't change.
I did discover that Debian no longer supports 386, with 486 being the
lowest chip they compile for. They document this better than Ubuntu.
Good day

On 6/19/11, Lexen <email address hidden> wrote:
> Shouldn't we just rename them 32bit and 64bit respectively? Is there
> something I'm missing?
>
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