Fedora's 32-Bit Scare
Stephen Smoogen Monday proposed that Fedora drop the 32-bit architecture with version 23 or 24 to see what folks might think. 83 comments and, at least, one strongly worded blog post later Smoogen had his answer. Today he posted an apology and retraction. In other news, KDE 5.3 promises to be faster and GNOME 3.15 may be safer.
Last Monday, Fedora developer and steering committee member, Stephen Smoogen posted, "I am going to make the uncomfortable and ugly proposal to drop 32 bit in Fedora 23 and only look at 64 bit architectures as primary architectures." The post made a bit of news and sparked discussions. Smoogen's post got 83 comments alone.
FossForce's Larry Cafiero even weighed in today with his outrage saying "the incalculable enormity of bad in this proposal" is "immeasurable." Cafiero believes there are lots of folks still using 32-bit, especially in poorer countries. Cafiero and other comments accused Smoogen and Red Hat/Fedora of being "first-world thinkers." The one side of most of the comments are folks stating that they, or someone somewhere, are still using a 32-bit machine in one way or another. The other side say the arch is obsolete and should go the way of the dinosaur.
In any case, Smoogen was shamed into submission and today posted an apology and retraction. He says his original post was "meant to be absurd" and that he made things worse by trying to defend his original argument. He added that he was actually worried about those still using 32-bit "living on borrowed time."
In other headlines today:
* Martin Gräßlin: KWin on Speed
* Matthias Clasen: Sandboxed applications for GNOME