>Won't many of the projects in the Ubuntu repositories be unavailable because of architectural reasons, i.e. ARM phones versus x86/64 desktops?
Almost the entirety of Linux userland software is very portable because the server space needs it to run on x86/sparc/power/itanic/whatever. There are exceptions but they tend to be rare and temporary, because hardware vendors don't want customers switching to x86 just because foo app doesn't run on their architecture, and for open source apps the hardware vendors can fix it themselves.
Meanwhile Linux is about the only sensible thing you can currently install on the vast expanse of old PowerPC Macs that can't run current versions of MacOS but can run current versions of Ubuntu or Debian, so any that get recycled into a personal server or a DVR box or whatever will have users pointing out any problems and requesting they be fixed.
And for the most part portability is portability: If you find x86 assembly somewhere and replace it with portable C and an ifdef to use the asm only on x86, or fix an endian issue, you haven't just fixed it for PowerPC or SPARC, you've fixed it for everyone.
This, incidentally, is why having a single architecture is so unhealthy: It promotes everyone forgetting about portability entirely, which prevents new, better architectures from taking hold merely because it's so much more work to port the existing installed base of software.
Almost the entirety of Linux userland software is very portable because the server space needs it to run on x86/sparc/power/itanic/whatever. There are exceptions but they tend to be rare and temporary, because hardware vendors don't want customers switching to x86 just because foo app doesn't run on their architecture, and for open source apps the hardware vendors can fix it themselves.
Meanwhile Linux is about the only sensible thing you can currently install on the vast expanse of old PowerPC Macs that can't run current versions of MacOS but can run current versions of Ubuntu or Debian, so any that get recycled into a personal server or a DVR box or whatever will have users pointing out any problems and requesting they be fixed.
And for the most part portability is portability: If you find x86 assembly somewhere and replace it with portable C and an ifdef to use the asm only on x86, or fix an endian issue, you haven't just fixed it for PowerPC or SPARC, you've fixed it for everyone.
This, incidentally, is why having a single architecture is so unhealthy: It promotes everyone forgetting about portability entirely, which prevents new, better architectures from taking hold merely because it's so much more work to port the existing installed base of software.