Comment 1 for bug 848154

all of the ubuntu archive is built for cortex-a8 and beyond with all optimization features the v7 architecture offers (minus NEON which we forbid to be build-time enabled by default due to teh fact that we support non NEON armv7 devices) this includes features like thumb2 i.e. vfpv3-d16, softfp and armv7-a ... with the next release we will also start move to hardfloat by default

while dropping v5/v6 support was a move that hurts, it was a requirement to get the best optimization out of the v7 arch.
if we would in parallel want to support v6 and older alongside with v7 that would mean to have a full binary archive in parallel (17000 source packages) for this arch. additionally to not slow down general operations that would need dedicated build machines and a team of say 3-5 persons full time that take over maintenance for the packages, builds and archive (more people if you actually want to develop images for a target board).

the situation you ask to resolve is pretty much like demanding i386 support for all intel packages in favor of dropping things like MMX or co-processor support or other very basic optimization that only entered this arch in 486 or pentium times. if we would do that on intel ubuntu would crawl there ...

canonical invests a lot into having the arm images and the port available, but ubuntu is not an embedded distro, its focus is on building desktop and server images and the current defaults for the arm port are focused on HW that can run these setups (dual core 1GHz, at least 1G ram etc).

if raspberry (or anyone else) would reliably commit to invest into the above resources (buildds, a few fulltime people etc) to cover the costs for such a port (and for its ongoing maintenance) i dont think this would be refused though. canonical whatsoever will very likely go on to cover only v7 and beyond.

note that, while i'm a canonical employee in the ubuntu arm team, the above is my personal opinion and view of the situation, i'm not speaking for the company here and would personally appreciate a v6 port but the resources have to come from somewhere for this.

i know that linaro has a plan (but thats still in its infancy) to provide an easy way to maintain your own archive rebuild locally for such cases where people want un-optimized binaries for older arm versions, it might make sense to contact them about the status of this project.

i will close this bug as invalid as we are unlikely to resolve it without external resources (people, hardware, money etc), in case there are solutions for these points, feel free to re-open it.