news 28 Posted November 24, 2009 Hi, The state of lpia in 9.10 is largely unusable, and continued support is expected to require significant effort by many parties, including: * upstream developers using launchpad PPAs * Ubuntu Developers, including kernel, toolchain, and application maintainers * Other community members involved in Ubuntu development, either watching build failures, or working with PPAs. * Canonical infrastructure support staff * Third-party application vendors providing binary packages Recent announcements by Intel indicate that processors supported by the lpia architecture are expected to remain compatible with the IA32 instruction set, so there is a reduced expectation of the need to retain a separate architecture to address future requirements. As of 9.10, lpia and i386 share the kernel configuration, reducing most of the benefits potentially available in previous Ubuntu releases. During a discussion at the Lucid Lynx Ubuntu Developer Summit on the future of the architecture, all participants agreed that retiring the architecture would be a net benefit to Ubuntu. Several participants volunteered to investigate the performance and power consumption of lpia vs. i386, with the intention of bringing these improvements forward in future releases. Existing users of lpia may expect support for the regular support periods, but will no longer be able to upgrade directly to Lucid or future releases. Further, on investigation, upgrades to Karmic are not recommended due to the limited maintenance performed on the release. These users are encouraged to test a recent i386 release on their hardware, and any hardware support discrepancies between the architectures will be addressed promptly. Affected users are encouraged to reinstall affected systems sometime prior to end of life for 9.04. Thanks, -- Steve On behalf of the Ubuntu Mobile team -- Share this post Link to post
