[HEADSUP] Phasing out old Windows versions and 32 bit support

[Corinna Vinschen]

On Oct 27 09:24, Takashi Yano via Cygwin wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Oct 2021 22:55:01 +0200
> Corinna Vinschen wrote:
> > We're also planning to drop Support for the 32 bit release of Cygwin in
> > 2022, thus Cygwin 3.4.0 won't come in 32 bit anymore, and the package
> > maintainers won't have to update 32 bit packages anymore.  If you're
> > still running Cygwin under WOW64, consider to move to 64 bit in the next
> > couple of months.
> 
> I agree with you that 32 bit cygwin under WOW64 is not worth to
> support any more. However, 32 bit version of Windows 10 will be
> still supported at least until Oct. 2025. Personally, I think it
> would not be nice to exclude the supported windows version from
> cygwin support.

Well, it's not much effort to support WOW64 if we support 32 bit anyway.
The problem is that Cygwin is somehow outgrowing 32 bit systems in terms
of the available memory.  Also, 32 bit Cygwin is still using a 32 bit
time_t, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_2038_problem

Per the download statistics, as far as those statistics are trustable,
32 bit systems are less than 5% of the installed base, with the majority
of them being WOW64 installations.  Those can move over to 64 bit Cygwin
easily.

Less than 1% are real 32 bit systems.

Dropping 32 bit support will reduce code complexity in Cygwin and it will
reduce the workload of the package maintainers.  Those few still running
Cygwin on a real 32 bit system will still have a chance to run Cygwin
by utilizing Peter's time machine.


Corinna