Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Will Not Support Old CPUs

Note also that the 12.04 iso will be 50 mb larger that a standard CD. Only users with DVD writers or the ability to boot from USB can even install the OS. This eliminates older systems that may not run Ubuntu 12.04 well anyway. Perhaps this is good. A similar move was made with 7.04, that removed checks for bad ram. I could not run Feisty Fawn. I went back to 6.10 until the next release which ran just fine. This may be a good thing: Ubuntu Gnome and Kubuntu have performed poorly on older, low-powered machines for some time now. This made the Ubuntu look bloated and slow. Like Windows XP, Vista, if you want the latest hotness, upgrade your machine.

Bodhi Linux - Enlightenment on Deb/buntu

don't you think people complained when operating systems got bigger than the 1.44" floppy?

None of this really matters. Ubuntu users are abandoning the distribution in droves because everyone hates Unity.

Ubuntu users abandoning because of Unity.....Then they do not understand linux at all as how hard is it to apt-get install gnome....apt-get install xfce...apt-get install fluxbox... I could go on and on.. Hell you could download E16 and build from source ....its not that hard, and thats what I do and use all the time as it is a quick window manager. I do have to say, Unity or not, Ubuntu is still one of the best distributions and its what probably ended up getting most of you abandoning it here in the first place.

Add to this the fact that the Ubuntu iso is just 50 larger than a normal CD. To use 12.04 you need to write DVD's or be able to boot from USB storage. Ubuntu looks less bloated and slow if it runs on new machines with lots of ram.

I use unity, and think it has been improved....

Ubuntu just keeps on shooting themselves in the foot...

Ubuntu is not a distrobution for slow systems anyway, so might as well drop all the old stuff

Distrobution is not a word.

Anyway, looks like Ubuntu is going Vista on its users.

As long as Lubuntu and the low resource variants still have access to a non-pae kernel I don't see a problem with this. Ubuntu itself is a mainstream desktop operating system. It's not touted as a legacy or low resource OS. There are plenty of niche distros out there to cover those that need a non-pae kernel.

I´m using Ubuntu Server also on firewalls on older computers. I will switch servers and firewalls back to Debian then. Ubuntu can support older hardware with no special effort. Highest Pentium M on 2,26 GHz isn´t antique and beats Pentium 4 3,2G.

Come on people sometimes change is a good thing ..
if ubuntu sticks with old systems it won't evolve
we love the old ubuntu but change is better on the long run
besides unity is not as bad as people say, it's a drastic change no doubt but a change towards a better operating system
The only thing i didn't like in the 11.10 version is the large number of bugs .. ubuntu has changed from an ultra stable system to an ultra buggy one, but there is nothing that can't be fixed with some brains
Let's hope version 12.04 is more stable, less buggy, and functions better when it comes to multitasking

Your correct! Linux cannot lead from the back of the pack. We're always plying catch-up and trying to emulate some other OS feature. We need to draw new users to Linux because of our features are more innovative than say MAC or Windows. So what I'm saying is that we cannot hold on to legacy hardware support forever, especially when the price of computers are becoming cheaper every day.

if the move will make ubuntu 12.04 stable and faster lets drop suppoort for all the non PAE CPUs after all most of the softwares now are designed for modern CPUs.

Who cares? non-pae processors should die!

Actually, there are probably a lot of home users that have an LTS server using old hardware as a firewall, dhcp server, and NAS for their personal family use. I have been doing that for 6 years now with an old pentium M with 2 GB NICs, etc. It has been nice to have a stable and safe server that does everything I need for my family with only a small amount of work every 2 years to upgrade to the latest LTS.

But Pentium M (mobile equivalent P-III) has PAE feature (AFAIK)

I hate to see any hardware excluded but then I don't know just how much extra work it is for them to maintain it. If 12.04 isn't a LOT better than 11.10 I'm not sure it matters anyway. Ubuntu is going downhill fast. It used to be a good OS but now it is more suitable for phones than desktops. 11.04 was a step away from useful function and 11.10 was a bigger step. It looks like Canonical has decided it is more important to court phone and tablet users and the intellectually challenged crowd that is impressed by eye candy than to be a useful tool for desktop users. I used to recommend it to everyone. No more.

Was upsetting when my Neoware ca10 went to upgrade and locked up on a kernel that would not support the C3 . This was why I chose Ununtu...

I'm not really going to complain too much, either way it goes. I have 6 older computers that were made before 2000, and they work just fine with Red Hat 9 and Fedora Core 6 and Windows 98. Newer does not mean better, especially for certain programs that were not made for faster CPU's and/or newer GPU's. But still, I said the same thing about windows - an operating system should for the most part be able to "adapt" to any harware up to the time it was created. For my case, I couldn't get FC6 to work on a computer I built in 2005 all because I changed the video card last year with an ATI Radeon HD5970. I wish I could have the same flavor on all of my computers, but just can't do it. Completely doing away with the support for older CPU's is a mistake, and besides, for a home server you don't need quad 16 core CPU's with 256Gb of memory. My P4 400MHz does excellent with 386Mb RAM.

Ubuntu is a good tool for my organization www.projectportatil.org , where we take older computers as donations and set them up to work in schools in developing nations. I think other similar orgs like world computer exchange use ubuntu also. I think if there's a previous version that's supported for a few years into the future it will probably bridge the gap sufficiently to when the donated machines are all PAE

Well, i'm really in need for a non-PAE kernel, because it boots on my geode cpu. It's my aim to install asterisk pbx on this very low powered hardware. With just 5 Watts it's really a perfect fit for a my asterisk pbx.

Please support older hardware! It's good for reusing old hardware and therefor has a low environmental footprint. Please...!