On Thu, Oct 12, 2017 at 03:52:15PM +0100, Jorge Gonçalves wrote:
> Hi!
> First, let me congratulate Devuan for the good job it has been doing so far.
> I have one suggestion for you to think about.
> Since, in a sense, Devuan tries to explore different ways to run a
> O.S. than the mainstream distro's out there, why not have packages for
> the X32 ABI??
> https://wiki.debian.org/X32Port
> https://sourceware.org/glibc/wiki/x32

Also https://debian-x32.org, by yours truly. But don't use the installer
from that site -- binNMU version conflicts make it non-trivial to upgrade
to something modern. Which means you neither get security fixes nor
functionality fixes (stuff like iptables or sound didn't work then).

> Since the Debian Stretch release, the debian X32 port has been almost
> without maintenance, only works now with sid (unstable),

It never was a part of testing, thus it never existed as part of any other
release. I attempted to make an unofficial Jessie, but while it is capable
of installing, I did not get it functional enough to bother keeping that
security supported.

I run unstable x32 on a bunch of my machines, although obviously nothing
important.

> and some packages are beginning to break things around

Can you name what? I don't quite have the motivation to look for problems
outside of packages I use myself, but can obviously look into reported
problems.

> like for instance, that one, yes, you guess, systemd.

Excuse me for not running this one. :þ

> Unfortunately, the (few) X32 maintainers only work on the packages
> they need for their own use cases, and even when I send them some
> patches and ideas to improve, they don't care about, they say they
> have no time!

While I'm indeed guilty of the first one, I did not have any patches sent my
way. Some package maintainers care little about second-class architectures,
but after enough inaction there come porter NMUs.

> So, debian X32 has been partially broken since June.

Care to say how? It works on servers I use, and I just booted my MATE
partition, works and upgrades without a hitch.

> I'm still able to run a very nice, fast and full functional Xfce4
> desktop by downgrading systemd, but every month some other packages
> went broken, so this is no solution.

It's often the case that packages are briefly uninstallable -- if something
in a dependency chain gets updated on first-class architectures, it may
break installability of its dependencies. But apt handles this well and
won't allow upgrades until the situation improves.

> I have no doubt that X32 ABI is the only one that can squeeze that
> last mile of performance from the x86/amd64 architecture. (and, as a
> side effect, the cpu runs cooler than with amd64, something important
> on notebooks)

The two benefits of x32 are:
* significant memory savings
* modest speed gains

Speed gains are nowhere big enough to make the CPU noticeably cooler: while
there are artificial loads with a gain over 40%, a reasonable figure is like
7%. If you run a $1M cluster, obviously that $70k saved is a big deal, but
on a single machine it makes you look like a proverbial Gentoo ricer (no
offense for Gentoo folks -- they use this term themselves for people who
use optimizations that cause problems for no real gain).

> Unfortunately, as in many other things in life, the industry as chosen
> not the best technology but the one that gives them more profits, in
> this case the amd64, that generally incentives a hardware upgrade.

32-bit architectures keep dying left and right. It's not worth the effort
to use obsolete hardware. I use x32 because it's more efficient and can
nicely coexist with 64-bit processes on the machine, not because I'm somehow
in love with electricity-guzzling old junk.

> And, of course, if a Devuan X32 build receives green light, you can
> count on me for all the initial effort needed to make it happen.

I'm quite low on motivation here, so no way I'm volunteering to restart
efforts alone, but if there are people willing...

--
⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀ Meow!
⣾⠁⢰⠒⠀⣿⡁
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ I was born a dumb, ugly and work-loving kid, then I got swapped on
⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀ the maternity ward.