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Linux Letting Go: 32-bit Builds On the Way Out (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous shares a report on The Register:Major Linux distributions are in agreement: it's time to stop developing new versions for 32-bit processors. Simply: it's a waste of time, both to create the 32-bit port, and to keep 32-bit hardware around to test it on. At the end of June, Ubuntu developer Dimitri Ledkov chipped into the debate with this mailing list post, saying bluntly that 32-bit ports are a waste of resources. "Building i386 images is not 'for free', it comes at the cost of utilising our build farm, QA and validation time. Whilst we have scalable build-farms, i386 still requires all packages, autopackage tests, and ISOs to be revalidated across our infrastructure." His proposal is that Ubuntu version 18.10 would be 64-bit-only, and if users desperately need to run 32-bit legacy applications, the'll have to do so in containers or virtual machines. [...] In a forum thread, the OpenSUSE Chairman account says 32-bit support "doubles our testing burden (actually, more so, do you know how hard it is to find 32-bit hardware these days?). It also doubles our build load on OBS".
I guess I'm stuck using Windows 10 (32-bit) on my vintage 2006 MacBook (Intel Duo Core 32-bit processor).
I think that the trouble finding testing hardware is quite telling.
Can end users even buy a new, off-the-shelf 32-bit system these days, except for specialized devices like embedded systems?
Is there anything more than a relatively tiny fraction of the user base that is stuck on 32-bit hardware, that can't use virtual machines to run that software on something that's not a potato?
And I mean, it's not like the old 32-bit versions of OS's are gone. Windows 95 is still around. It didn't go away. I'm willing to bet there are still Windows 95 machines running somewhere in mission critical systems in places around the world.
Yes, there's no security updates, but just unplug it from the internet and you're safe from the vast majority of attacks, and if you're worried about local access to your Windows 95 machine... install a thicker door?
At some point technology has to move on.
Check out my sci-fi book "Lacuna" at http://goo.gl/MVxX8
"doubles our testing burden (actually, more so, do you know how hard it is to find 32-bit hardware these days?)" I can find 32-bit hardware easily. Obviously, someone who didn't try and claims it not possible.
You can blame Cankles all you want but it was time.
(Tried googling)
... though I suppose one can continue to run an old version. And it's not reasonable to expect open source volunteers to do double work. But it is still a loss.
So tried E-bay (feebay) and there seem to be a near unlimited number of 32-bit computers for sale.
At least for intel Archs, you can install a 32 Bit OS on a computer with a 64 bit capable cpu.
Why not just drop the boot 32bit part and only have the compact 32bit libs. Like how windows server 2008 and newer is on the windows side.
Why cut off apps that can run today on a 64bit system with out needing any vm bs.
But having no more 32bit machines with Ubuntu is probably a good thing.
The problem is not newly-bought consumer electronics or legacy software. The problem is legacy hardware. I'm still using the Thinkpad I bought in 2006 (4:3 aspect ratio display). Luckily it's a 64-bit processor, but others have older 32-bit machines.
It's also not about the kernel -- Linux itself will support 32-bit architecture for a long while more, and most software will compile correctly on both 32-bit and 64-bit, though it will be less and less true as distributions stop their QA and you are left with only the upstream development team.
Of course, these old machines are pretty few, so it probably does make sense for Ubuntu to drop 32-bit packages. Other more enthusiast-targeted distributions will probably keep 32-bit support. In particular Gentoo compiles everything locally.
Posts like this always confuse me. The terms i386 and 32-bit are not interchangeable. AFAIK, they were only talking about getting rid of i386 architecture (i.e. 20+ year old 32-bit hardware), but would maintain i686 (more recent 32-bit hardware) support.
It's hard to believe that testing 32-bit really doubles the testing effort, but whatever.
One of the biggest parts of testing consists of keeping test systems up and running and ready to run the tests, every retired system is less labor.
Virtual machines need updating and maintenance, too, they are not "free" by any stretch, again labor is saved when they are retired.
Often tests are not "totally bulletproof", with failures from system problems or incorrect setup, much labor is involved here in investigation and/or mitigation, again directly related to the number of systems to test.
Embedded, IoT and robotics are awash with 32 bit x86 stuff. And seriously, OBS load is the problem worth considering dropping x86?
I guess I'm stuck using Windows 10 (32-bit) on my vintage 2006 MacBook (Intel Duo Core 32-bit processor).
You have been found GUILTY of NON-GEEK THINKING!
Turn in your geek card and proceed to geek jail! You are here by sentenced to 3 years first level technical support ("Have you tried turning it on and off?").
Judges ruling:
As we see, a geek would just compile his own kernel to his machine and wouldn't need to worry about if one already existed compiled for his machine. The defendant won't or doesn't know about or doesn't know how. Three years of low level technical support should re-educate him. Parole is available after one year if he compiles and runs the latest Linux Distro of his choice on his machine.
Court adjourned.
The old laptop crowd should consider this as an opportunity to try something new - BSD!
http://www.openbsd.org/i386.html
https://www.freebsd.org/platforms/i386.html
http://wiki.netbsd.org/ports/i386/
So much for Linux being "great for old hardware". This is really just an dubious move by distros and really just ignores a huge area where Linux can see use: Old hardware where Windows wont run. You also have another aspect of this which is your basically trashing 32 bit app support if you do not include 32 bit libraries, or, providing a thunk between 32 bit apps and 64 bit libraries.
Even if 32 bit libraries are not built, you should be able to run a 32 bit app by compiling the libraries yourself, so distros could at least allow people to build 32 bit libraries easily from source packages, (with the benefit of automatically building all dependancies).
Another area this will create problems is with VMs on even recent hardware, Intel chips up to just a year or two ago didnt include VT-x or a Ring 2, which means that virtualization of 64 bit OSs will not work.
At least for intel Archs, you can install a 32 Bit OS on a computer with a 64 bit capable cpu.
Which doesn't mean squat. We're talking Q.A. here.
The goal is to determine whether the code will work on a real 32-bit architecture, not a 64-bit architecture running in 32-bit emulation mode. The two have differences. If you run the tests on something other than the real target you have no clue whether it will work on the real thing.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
20 bits ought to be enough for anybody!
2^20 = 1MB address space, yielding 640KB of RAM.
and yes, /me knows he probably didn't say it, and/or didn't mean it the way it was interpreted.
You know, you can head over to newegg or wherever, and price together a very cheap low end machine (like whatever the cheapest AMD APU is) that would still run circles around a 2006 era Core Duo (last 32-bit only that I can think of). There really is no reason to keep running one of those old processors. Even the lowest of the low end new laptops would be better than a Macbook from 2006.
If you're about to complain about the cost, keep in mind that even internet access and power requirements for an ancient machine would quickly cover the cost of a low end replacement.
No, I think it's time to move on.
I don't see the problem here. While it may be tedious, it's not technically difficult to build your own 32-bit packages from source, at least most of the time - the (64-bit) package maintainers have done most of the hard work already, identifying dependencies and whatnot. You may occasionally have to do some troubleshooting, especially as time goes forward - but is this sort of thing where the Linux community really shines.
Heck, you might even learn something.
#DeleteChrome
Devuan's only support ATM is x86,x86_64, arm, and aarch64. Support them and make clear that 32 bit support is important to you.
I'm sure some wannabe developers will start making 64 bit assumptions in their C/C++ code, but other than that there is no reason you can't keep using it. I still have lots of systems running x86 code (many predating x86_64, and a number of others without enough memory capacity to validate a switch to x86_64 userspace.)
Furthermore, if you don't need binary compatibility, you should look into musl-libc.org, it is a complete reimplementation of the linux libc with better features, a shorter compile time, and support back to i486 (with the ability to compile simple c programs using compilers as old as gcc 2.95.3 and 2.7.x, although both need patches for the musl trinary to work with autoconf and company.) The only missing features in it are sunrpc and some of the old charset support (it is iso9660/utf-8 clean, latter assumed to provide most coverage for today's systems.) There are a number of musl based distros now, including a gentoo profile that can build a system using musl (individual ebuilds may fail obviously, but the support is there for the majority of the system, gcc-6.1.0 supports musl out of the box, and llvm/clang/libc++ can provide an alternative toolchain, although gentoo has too many incumbent gcc-reliant ebuilds to move to a clang-only system so far (although you should be able to do it manually with CC/CXX/CFLAGS/CXXFLAGS/LDFLAGS, as I have in the past.)
The popular linux distros have already lost the faith of many of us with systemd and other questionable development decisions. One more disappointing choice like this doesn't matter in the big picture because it has been time to migrate for a while, they have just taken the choice of putting the migration off for another version out of your hands if you still run x86 hardware.
We at least need enough 32-bit packages available in the 64-bit distro (whether by dpkg --add-architecture i386, or by installing "lib32" packages like we used to do) to install and run Wine.
You see, to run Win32 programs, your Wine emulator binary needs to be a 32-bit Linux/ELF application. I suppose it could emulate cross-architecture, but wine prides itself on *not* emulating native code generation (for performance). Otherwise it would be as slow as a software virtualization solution like Bochs or (non-KVM) qemu.
Wine, in turn, depends on a number of system libraries for core services. It then implements common Windows APIs "in terms of" available platform libraries. Direct3D in terms of OpenGL; DirectSound in terms of libasound2 or libpulse; etc. These libraries, linked into a 32-bit binary, must also be 32-bit.
I agree that there's no point in testing 32-bit *hardware* any longer, but I hope they continue to ship 32-bit *builds* (even if they stop making 32-bit installation CDs). There's just too much software on the Win32 platform that needs to run on Linux (desktop OR server; see game servers) to abandon this segment of the market.
What's there to "find"? You can kick-off a 32-bit VM under any hypervisor — both on the cloud or on your own desktop. You can automate the VM-creation and tear-down on your build-farm quite easily.
I too strongly prefer to have a system, where size_t is equal to off_t (so you could mmap an entire file and not worry about it), but that is not "free". 64-bit pointers are, obviously, twice-wider than 32-bit ones, so "hairy" structures — with lots of pointers in them — nearly double in size. If none of your processes require more than 4Gb of virtual memory, there is no reason — other than the developers' laziness — to go 64-bit.
Whether it is an OS embedded inside a router or a point-of-sale machine, or even a single-user web-and-email desktop, 32-bit is perfectly sufficient and the overhead of 64-bit not justified.
And that laziness is what is keeping us back... Over the last 18 years, according to Moore's law, our computers have become at least 2^12 times more powerful. Now ask yourself, is the user-experience — however you choose to measure it — 4096 times better than it was in 1998? And, if it is not, where did the gains in hardware go?
By refusing to setup/use tens or even hundreds of 32-bit test-systems, developers force thousands and millions of users to upgrade. That is not a fair trade-off.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
i386 is a very old instruction set that nobody uses any more. i686 is the newer ia-32 architecture that started with the Pentium Pro around 1995. I believe that will still be supported. Maybe not by Canonical but who cares about them, they're corporate pinheads anyway.
There are a bunch of desktop distributions that will no longer do 32 bit builds. Makes sense.
No effect on kernel or disties for 32 bit systems/embedded/etc.
... how much benefit there will truly be in dropping support for 32 bit arch. Essentially, people are saying "it's hard, and we don't want to keep doing it." Ok, fair enough, but then why not just say "we're going to stop supporting audio drivers and software, because it's hard and we don't want to keep doing it." Or fill in any other component or function. The fact is, there is clearly quite a number of people still using 32 bit, and apps still support it. As long as there is a need, and available apps, the decision to slice out a large section of the user base is an arbitrary one, at best.
Maybe if you're a developer working on this project, and you're getting burned out on your job, instead of pushing changes like this that will negatively affect the user base, you should just make some personal life changes. In other words, maybe it's not the software that needs to change, but rather, the people working on it.
Just a thought...
RPM non-binary package:
noarch
Used for packages that aren't arch-specific, documentation, configuration, etc.
Sun/Oracle:
sparcv9 sparcv9v sparc sparc64 sparc64v sparcv8
sparc is sparc32 v7 abi (or should be... systems: ipx ss2, etc)
sparcv8 is v8+ abi (32 bit with some new instructions, ss4/5/10/20)
sparcv9/sparc64 is sun ultra+ systems (ultra 1 and above with 64 bit processors.)
sparcv9v is (I assume) Niagra chips and above, containing virtualization/containerization tech.
Hitachi SuperH:
sh4 sh4a sh sh3
Not sure what arch 'sh' is (sh2?3?)
sh3/4 were used in some routers and I think the Sega Saturn/Dreamcast/Naomi 1/2 consoles/arcade boards. Have never actually seen one outside a console in real life, although in japan at least there were apparently some routers using them as embedded processors running linux.
ARM:
aarch64 armv5tel armv6hl armv3l armv6l armv4b armv7hl armv4l armv7l armv5tejl
aarch64 is the 64 bit arm extensions. The rest are arm versions from 3 to 7 with different option flags. I think wikipedia has a comprehensive article on what they all mean. Lots of possible binary incompatibilities with arm binaries if you don't build to a specific instruction subset, which almost nobody ever did. v5->7 should I believe be forwards compatible. v6 and 7 definitely are.
Alpha:
alphapca56 alpha alphaev5 alphaev56 alphaev6 alphaev67
DEC's legacy shat all over by Compaq+HP. Better chip than IA64 if they had only produced them on newer processes and provided PC-prices entry level systems to keep developers engaged. China is supposedly producing homegrown knockoffs of these chips for fpu calculations in one of their supercomputers.
x86/x86_64:
geode amd64 i386 i486 pentium3 x86_64 i586 pentium4 i686 athlon ia32e
geode is amd's embedded x86, used in the original released OLPCs and various other embedded systems and devices. Not sure the exact x86 arch it is equivalent to (486->586, and maybe newer arch features)
ia32e I think is the x32 or x86_64 using 32 bit pointer ABI which allows the register file of x86_64 but only using 32 bit pointer references to keep memory usage low for applications that don't require more than 4 gigs of ram.
amd64 == x86_64
And the rest of those are Intel/AMD designations up to to SSE2 (P4) Not sure why they have that many different versions.
Itanic:
ia64 - Nuff said
IBM/Others PowerPC:
ppc64 ppciseries ppc64iseries ppcpseries ppc64p7 ppc64pseries ppc ppc8260 ppc32dy4 ppc8560
32 and 64 bit variants of PowerPC, dating from 90s era Macs to today.
IBM S390:
s390 s390x
Some sort of mainframe/large workstation systems I think. Not sure if the supported models are all PPC derived or not. I believe they run a different microcode layer on top of the cpus intended for mainframe use. Also run a hypervisor(or equivalent) above linux (and predating hypervisor capabilities in x86 by many years.)
Hope that helps! Check wikipedia for further info. They have rather comprehensive articles on all of these!
Fuck you and your stupid "disties" slang!
Just upgrade already, why are you purposely trying to extend the life of an old piece of garbage that most likely consume 10x more power than a new PC of much better performances today... Even if sub $300 PC/Laptop would probably perform better than a nearly 10 year old PC still stuck on 32bit.
The only reason why I install 32-bit stuff on my Linux machine is that it is needed when compiling VirtualBox from source code.
Except for the fact that abandoning 32-bit software also abandons all the older 32-bit hardware that is still functional.
Perhaps the solution is to keep backporting security and bugfixes to their last 32-bit release. That should be less of a burden that spinning an entire distro.
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Intel Atom netbooks suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
AKA, my netbook :(
Thanks Hillary!
use of 3 letters goes a long way here for those who know most ARM ports are 32-bit. Those 3 letters are "x", "8", "6".
Like this: Linux Letting Go: 32-bit x86 Builds On the Way Out
was that so difficult?
Aw, we don't want to do this because it takes time and it's hard.
JOIN THE CLUB.
Tried 64 bit Ubuntu on my cheap/disposable AMD A4 travel laptop, it worked but found it stressed the poor thing almost as much as Win 10 did. I tried a 32 bit Linux (which should be less stressing) only to find the 32 bit Linux didn't support several hardware functions (WiFi for example.) It would seem that 32 bit Linux is already depreciated...
It's becoming more clear every day how the major Linux distributions have all been drinking the same cool-aid. If you think killing 32bit is no big deal you don't use it nor care to understand.
CentOS 7 for example doesn't come with 32Bit, it had to be created by the community and was / is to a degree, still a mess. Like, Steam. You know, people do really use Linux for gaming. Their rather arrogant response is to
push Fedora for desktop users. Fedora is a moving freaking target like Ubuntu - it's not coming anywhere near any system of mine.
I could list off more but in the end I suspect like everything else Ubuntu/Red Hate are killing, it won't matter. Their shills are everywhere.
There are several modern computers (e.g. Intel Compute Stick) with only 1GB of RAM. And this is not enough for a x64 OS.
Old Intel Atom processors won't run 64-bit code. My firewall/gateway machine is running an nice but old nano-ITX motherboard with such a processor. I had to download debian's 386 build to get it to work. So, I hope debian at least keeps the 386 build for a while.
—G
I had 3 or 4 ... 8 bit computers. But haven't had one around for more than 25 years. For a while I had a few 16 bit machines (I think I might have one still around). I have an old 32 bit machine. Haven't turned it on in at least 7-8 years. It was odd going to 64 bits, and at the time there were people who were waffling on whether anyone should switch to 64 bit machines. But its been 64 bit for at lest 7 years now. It will likely be at least another 10 or maybe 15 before anyone says 128 bit (that is pure speculation, but its my opinion that each time you double the number of bits, the longevity of that number of bits also doubles). So 2016 + 15 will be 2031 before we go to 128 bits (more or less). 64 bit memory can address 16777216 terabytes of ram, and can have 16777216 terabytes of instructions. You don't need that many instructions, you won't need that much ram (16777216 terabytes should be enough for anyone), so I think we will be at 64 bits for a while.
32-bit posix dates use Jan 1, 1970 as the zero point. The maximum range is...
-2^31 seconds to
(2^31) - 1 seconds
from Jan 1, 1970, 0000 hr
Try the following short bash script
#!/bin/bash
date --date="@2147483647"
date --date="@2147483648"
date --date="@-2147483649"
date --date="@-2147483648"
On a 32-bit linux system (real or VM), you get...
Mon Jan 18 22:14:07 EST 2038
date: invalid date '@2147483648'
date: invalid date '@-2147483649'
Fri Dec 13 15:45:52 EST 1901
If you're a bank amortizing 25-year mortgages, you're already running into problems on a 32-bit linux. On a 64-bit system you'll get...
Mon Jan 18 22:14:07 EST 2038
Mon Jan 18 22:14:08 EST 2038
Fri Dec 13 15:45:51 EST 1901
Fri Dec 13 15:45:52 EST 1901
The wraparound date for 64-bit time_t is 15:30:08 on Sunday, 4 December 292,277,026,596 by which time I don't expect to be around.
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user
It's becoming more clear every day how the major Linux distributions have all been drinking the same cool-aid.
Seems so, but as of now 32 bit Linux has 22 years left (year 2038). I heard that may be fixed but AFAIK nothing yet. In any case for 32 bit I would use NetBSD or OpenBSD since the 2038 issue does not exist for them. I would like to know what "major dist" officially includes :) One distro I consider major just released a 32 bit version.
I'm not heartbroken by the end of 32-bit distros in a year or two, though I do still run a few 32-bit bootable Linux images on old systems being used as remote desktop terminals.
That said, at least in the Intel-compatible world just about any x64 hardware out there will also run i386 32-bit just fine. You probably don't even have to take out the extra non-usable RAM though I confess I've never tried. Hardware to test a 32-bit build should be no harder to come by than hardware to test an x64 build.
fencepost
just a little off
There's nothing childish about suggesting we have a functioning border, you (((rootless cosmopolitan))).
Modern technology allowed more foreigners to enter Britain in 2015 than every year between 1066 and 1950 inclusive.
Are you willing to concede that the native Amerindians were a bunch of nasty xenophobes for opposing all those friendly European immigrants? They were opposing the almighty market and the neoliberal god Mammon... to send them upon a trail of tears was a great kindness.
May death alight upon your wretched skull with the utmost haste.
Trump 2016.
Even the worst of them run longer than the support life of their intended software.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Now might be a good time to upgrade to at least a T7200 if not put in a 14" T61 board. Did the latter with a T60p, adding a SSD, 8gb of memory, and a T9500 without regrets.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
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Yes but there are plenty of things based on 32 bit ARM CPUs being sold in 2016.
"i386" is still the name that Debian and its derivatives (like Ubuntu) use for the 32-bit x86 platform, regardless of the specific chip. Debian actually dropped support for pre-686 CPUs a few months ago, and had required at least 586 for several years prior, but the overall architecture is still called "i386", because that's what it's always been called, and there's no real benefit (and lots of inconvenience) in changing it. Same reason why 64-bit x86 is called "amd64" even though Intel implements it too.
This Ubuntu proposal is about dropping 32-bit x86 entirely, not just certain old chips.
You are doubling size of typical data structures made up of ints and pointers, while RAM and especially CPU cache is a very finite resource. Why would you want to do that when modern hardware supports 32 bit software perfectly well?
> the OpenSUSE Chairman account says 32-bit support "doubles our testing burden (actually, more so, do you know how hard it is to find 32-bit hardware these days?).
WTF is "hard to find 32-bit hardware", dude? Nobody asks you to dig out an old 486 computer. Last time I checked, all x86-64 CPUs had full i386 support built-in.
but there rite thers so few 32 bit systems left in fact i dont own any. it may be a porblem for embedded systems but most of those run old versions of a os anyways.
It's sad and pathetic that you literally can need multiarch on your Linux system just to run steam. The games usually are 64-bit (actually, they usually come with both 32- and 64-bit binaries) but Steam still isn't. It's amazing how incompetent Valve can actually be, and still lead the market.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
"Look, you have thousands of 32 bit only machines with 2 GB of memory. We support them with Windows 10 32 bit while Linux will drop their support"
This is how Linux could never be a credible player on corporate desktop. Some guy who has zero experience in the real World, real business scene propose something with corporate wannabe talk, everyone claps and says "Yea drop those old stinky CPU support".
One can't demand support for Macbook unless he/she donates several machines and money for this purpose to the distribution and if distribution agrees to support them.
I am seriously pissed off by these Starbucks Latte drinking, trendy types poisoning the Linux scene too but let's not forget Apple are the guys who shipped 32bit only machine with some weird EFI back in 2006. They always pick 2 generation old CPU and add some non standard weird firmware. You can't expect support from Linux or BSD guys, they need access to real hardware.
When will they start on the 128-bit linux? We haven't increased word size for a while
What about realtime Linux that can run on 32, 16 and maybe 8 bit cpus acting as micro controllers?
And some of their bosses don't just cash out for new machinery every decade.
My own boss' policy is to run the old junk until it breaks down.
Neither of us have 64 bit computers.
Neither of us even have computers new enough to do useful virtualization (ie run WinXP ina box).
Neither of us have money to buy new computers.
Exceeding the recommended torque is not recommended.
...for me. All I have left are 32-bit processors. My 64-bit ones have all failed and I really don't want to spend the money to replace them.
Which brings up a new point, why do 64-bit systems so failure prone when compared to 32-bit?
... that will continue 32bit support. I bet there are a few out there who are glad to jump to the occasion and get a larger userbase.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Every fucking PC on sale today runs 32 bit code just fine.
What an idiot.
Watch this Heartland Institute video
Glad there are more people mentioning those systems. FreeBSD is nice. But those two operating systems beg to be mentioned after an article like this one.
You can use 64-bit CPUs as stand-ins for pure 32-bit CPUs because of instruction set compatibility.
That's why the OpenSUSE Chairman sounds dumb, talking about how hard it is to get 32-bit hardware. In fact it's drop-dead easy to get 32-bit hardware.
You seem to have missed this point completely. Thanks for playing!
When is the kernel letting go?
Ops, I shuld have usd the prevuwe but in.
TFA seems to suggest that 32-bit compat is out too (by the suggestion to run 32-bit processes in containers / virtual machines).
If this is also the plan, they can take a long walk off a short pier. There are plenty of 32-bit images still out there (Steam games? Other stuff) which work just fine.
I've already ditched Ubuntu, going back to Debian simply because my system rotted through updates to the point where sound was a hit and miss affair. This just gives a solid reason not to care about Ubuntu any more. Pity, as it's "home-grown" for me )':
You know what else is a waste of resources...having a billion Linux distributions.
So, back when Linux was still "cool" to me, in Jr High, so around 1999 I remember arguing with friends and family about how awesome it was. One of the arguments I used to parrot all the time was "they build it for every machine ever! hardware capitalism gave up on can still be made viable because it installs on everything!" And you could do it without having to go full gentoo-kun. My first Linux was on an old PPC Mac, good ol Yellow Dog. How far Linux has come now that they are considering dropping a shitload of binaries for still widespread machines. It used to be for the people by the people. I guess it is not anymore. Maybe I've just been hanging out with Hancock too long.
If you want to keep your 32 bit POS up to date, just fork what you want to keep.
Looks like he is right I can't remember when I'd use x386 Linux last time if we didn't talk about some legacy servers All new installations are installed at x64 base and old ones can utilize old x386 distributions Maybe they can offer x386 images for a pay?! ))) Nah, there will be a shitstorm for that Otherwise most utilities and even control panels can use both x64 and x32 distributions, beginning from cPanel and ending with ServerSuit, so I don't mind.