Re: Architecture baseline for Forky

Well said, 100% agree with Jan-Daniel! Killing off an arch like Power8 that is still very useable is not ideal. Power8 should remain in Debian and is not a “retro computing” platform. 

> On Oct 26, 2025, at 8:54 PM, Jan-Daniel Kaplanski <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> 
>> 
>> Because that's 15 years and Debian's purpose is not to enable retrocomputing projects.
> Huh? What is Debian's purpose then? It even boasts about its broad hw support on the "Reasons to use Debian" page.[1]
> 
> Besides, the armhf baseline of armv7-a+fp aligns with the Cortex-A8 from 2005[2]. I highly doubt that archaic architecture has a lot of users besides SBCs up to the generation of RPi 2 and legacy embedded systems that are likely EOL too. Especially since aarch64 came in 2012 with armv8-a on the Cortex-A53/A57[3][4].
> 
> POWER8 went EOSL in 10/2024[5] (only a year ago, which in my books is far away from being a "retrocomputing" platform btw), plus POWER9 systems will reach the end of standard service on 31st Jan 2026[6], so by the time Forky is around in 2027 POWER9 will be obsolete too. Considering that, it's reasonable to ask for POWER8 to be supported beyond 2028, or in a more radical manner, move the baseline to POWER10 instead.
> 
> ---
> 
>> As a general guidance I would like to aim for a ten to 15 years support range
>> at release time.
> I take issue with that, as this approach does neither reflect on the actual user base nor the shelf life of a given architecture. There is the risk you kill off a platform too early when it still has an active user base. It only works in regards to POWER8/POWER9 because those have a 10 year span from release to EOL. Rather than "release + 15 years" I feel like it should be "EOL + X years", though there should be debate on what that "X years" may be.
> 
> ---
> 
> That's just my personal take on this as someone who is not involved in active development but likes to keep tabs on what's happening. From the perspective of a systems administrator, I'm not really fond of the idea of having to switch to a different OS because the platform is killed off on the basis of an arbitrary time frame.
> 
> Cheers, JD
> 
> [1]: https://www.debian.org/intro/why_debian.en.html
> [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A8
> [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A53
> [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_Cortex-A57
> [5]: https://www.ibm.com/new/announcements/ibm-power8-end-of-service
> [6]: https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/announcements/services-withdrawal-discontinuance-service-select-power-systems-products-replacements-available
>