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Ubuntu To Stop Offering 32-Bit ISO Images, Joining Many Other Linux Distros (bleepingcomputer.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Canonical engineer Dimitri John Ledkov announced on Wednesday that Ubuntu does not plan to offer 32-bit ISO installation images for its new OS version starting with the next release — Ubuntu 17.10 (Artful Aardvark) scheduled for release on October 19. The decision comes after month-long discussions on the dwindling market share of 32-bit architectures. Ledkov made it clear that Canonical does not plan to stop support for 32-bit architectures. The Ubuntu team plans to continue to offer security updates and bug fixes, but they won't be offering new ISO images. Lubuntu and Xubuntu, which are Ubuntu offshoots created to run on older computers, will most likely continue to provide 32-bit ISO images, as this is their bread and butter. Manjaro, Tails, and Arch Linux announced similar decisions. Even Google dropped support for Chrome on 32-bit Linux platforms, way back in 2015, predicting the overall trend.
is it 2032 already?
The contents of this message have been doubly encrypted by ROT13
Many people run Ubuntu Server on embedded devices. And Old Wyse terminal server makes a wonderful Cacti and Icinga box. (No good having monitoring inside a VM when the VM server fails...) Perfect for Pi-Hole. A nice syslog server you can drop at a client when needed. And Ubuntu Server is the only distribution you can install totally for free and then add support a-la-carte later. And yes, I have added an expensive support contract to a $10 used Wyse box for a client.
Are there really many 32bit systems being used in general purpose (workstation or similar) settings? I tend to come across 32bit boxes most often now as either embedded systems, mini servers (in low-demand applications), or various novelty / nostalgia applications. All of these could probably be better suited with a more specialized OS than Ubuntu that aims for the general populace. While it can make support a little more tricky (particularly if all your 64bit systems are Ubuntu) it is probably worth the effort. to switch.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Support is the key. Many people want support, or at least the option. Name some specialized distributions that support 32bit for embedded devices or small low powered specific needs. I'll wait...
The current release of NetBSD will still run on a 68030 Macintosh like the SE/30.
Just sayin'.
Pity those motherboards and CPUs used as a virtual machine host that don't support VT-x and can't run 64-bit VMs even though the host OS can be 64-bit.
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
If you're willing to pay, sure. Oh wait, you want both the OS and the support to be free? No can do.
Who offers paid support contracts for a 32 bit distribution? Not RedHat, Suse, or Ubuntu (now...) anyway.
According to the California Secretary of State Alex Padilla, last week's accusation of Russian interference in the US elections was blatantly incorrect. “DHS confirmed that Russian scanning activity had actually occurred on the California Department of Technology statewide network, not any Secretary of State website. Based on this additional information, California voters can further rest assured that the California Secretary of State elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors.” Wisconsin’s chief elections administrator, Michael Haas, has also repeatedly said that Homeland Security assured the state it had not been targeted: “Wisconsin was not provided any information that indicated before the November election that Russian government actors were targeting election systems.”
The latest Red Scare is just a big nothing burger.
For those arguing that there are still uses for 32bit machines, I gotta wonder: Is the cost of upgrading to something tiny, modern, and 64bit more or less expensive than running 32bit on old hardware if you include the cost of power?
Back in 1997, many computers still in use had single-digit megabytes of RAM, and the doubling of pointer length would have increased data cache misses and RAM misses, causing more swapping. The only affordable 64-bit computer in 1997 was a Nintendo 64 game console, and that was locked down through a security microcontroller to run only Nintendo-approved software.
Are there really many 32bit systems being used in general purpose (workstation or similar) settings? I tend to come across 32bit boxes most often now as either embedded systems, mini servers (in low-demand applications), or various novelty / nostalgia applications. All of these could probably be better suited with a more specialized OS than Ubuntu that aims for the general populace. While it can make support a little more tricky (particularly if all your 64bit systems are Ubuntu) it is probably worth the effort. to switch.
Well, I have a neat little Atom based Netbook that I use as my inventory and library computer. It is technically a 64 bit system, but its specs are such where a 64 bit OS and 64 bit applications are just too damn slow, and the only drivers available were for XP and 32 bit Windows 7; so after trying various solutions (even both Debian and Ubuntu), I ultimately settled on 32 bit W7.
On another note, since I can't be arsed at the moment to check out the article, is it only ISOs they are discontinuing, or is it all paths to a 32 bit installation (like network based install from bootable media for example)?
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Ok your right. Maybe 19 years ago? Or about the time microsoft me came out?
Have a firewall project already. I am good.
I can run 30% more VMs on my Linux Host using 32-bit server images. I understand dropping desktop, but i686 for server still makes perfect sense. I have 30 512 VMs running with 16 GB of Ram. If I was forced to upgrade to x86-64 today, I could only run 21 VMs. Not sure Ubuntu was considering the wasted memory when they made this call.
something tiny, modern, and 64bit
Sometimes modern isn't tiny.
The first round of netbooks, such as the Eee PC 900, were 9" laptops with a 32-bit Celeron processor. The second round of 9" and 10" netbooks used a 64-bit-capable Atom processor, but many shipped with 1 GB of RAM and can't be upgraded past 2 GB. At RAM sizes of 1 GB or less, pointer size increase becomes substantial, and "x32" (x86-64 with 32-bit pointers) never drew enough of a following to come close to displacing i386. (Xubuntu will still be around to support 1 GB PCs, and 64-bit Xubuntu appears to run OK on 2 GB.) A new netbook in 2017 won't be especially "tiny", as 11.6" appears to be the minimum screen size nowadays.
Twice as much you say.
Linux can use PAE and address 32GB of RAM in 32bit. Each process can access up to 3GB of RAM, so you don't need 64bit if a single process doesn't use more than 3GB.
AFAIK it will run on a 68020 but only if you have an MMU
Unfortunately, most 68k desktop machines don't have MMUs. That includes most 68k macs.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Since '64' seems to be the important number to some of you, why not just get a Commodore 64, or a Nintendo 64. Those have 64-ness, too.
64 bit has been held back due to.... Hold on I. My pager just went off. Seems I have to install a math co-processer and chang the ribbon on a serial line printer I'll be back in an hour.
64-bit ought to be faster: 16 64-bit GPRs, PC-relative addressing etc. If you want smaller pointers, it is nothing hindering you to run 32 bit apps on the 64-bit OS.
Back in 1997, many computers still in use had single-digit megabytes of RAM
You're thinking the early 1990's. I had 32MB in 1997
Back in 1997, overall PC prices were higher, and people still used PCs from 1994-95 that had 8 MB of RAM. Some had been upgraded to 8 MB to run Windows 95. My first Windows PC, purchased in 1997, was a used IBM PS/ValuePoint from mid-1995 that came with 8 MB of RAM, Windows 3.1, and Tseng ET4000 integrated graphics.
Windows Me (Millennium Edition) came out in late 2000, when PCs were shipping with Pentium III processors and 128 MB of PC133 RAM upgradable to 512 MB. The AMD64 spec was first published around that time, but the first 64-bit Opteron CPU didn't ship until August 2003.
There was at least one 64-bit Atom iteration which could do x64 just fine, but which did not ever have appropriate drivers available for Windows.
"Slower" in 64-bit here can be for a variety of reasons.
Kid-proof tablet..
OUCH! Commodore 64 had an 8 bit single core CPU. You don't want that running Ubuntu.
Isn't this the point? Apparently no one wants to purchase support for Ubuntu on 32bit systems, so they're no longer doing so.
If they had clients that requested this I suspect the support would continue to be there.
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
This was the Cherry Trail series I believe, which used the GMA 3150 GPU which was basically just like the GMA 500 from Imagination Technologies and required a proprietary blob to operate. Intel never released a 64bit driver for that GPU (or they tried, it had glitches and they didn't want to continue supporting it).
Fully licensed blockchain psychiatrist
A Commodore 64/128 computer won't run Linux, but it will run LUnix.
I got black ink stains on my fingers, my dockers, my white polo shirt and on the secretaries dress so I know all about printer ribbons .
It's not magic, we don't magically get great summaries about great articles.
There's enough real news and submissions in the queue to skip an utterly trivial, unremarkable story. The people who care probably don't even depend upon slashdot as a technical resource.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
hell i think its been more then 10 years sense 32 bit quit being mainline as a Pentium d supported 64bit. even Pentium 4 supported 64bit later in there life.
Tell me about your desktop - curious why virtualbox wonâ(TM)t support 64-bit VMs on it...
Ken
The 7xx were Celeron M, and starting with the 900a, they used atoms.
I moved my 701 to Voidlinux, which is not a derivative of any other distro. Hopefully Void will keep 32 bit supported longer than the debian/arch derivatives.
I also happen to dislike systemd, and Void boots very quickly.
This post was written using said 701 (4g surf).
Artix
Your Linux, your init.
64 bit applications tend to be a bit larger than their 32 bit counterparts, mostly because pointers and some other data types are larger. (Even if you keep the same data sizes within your application, the size of some data items called for by APIs like time stamps and I/O counters for streams get bigger.) Code size tends to stay about the same; the 64 bit code uses fewer instructions because of having more registers available, but the instructions are on average a bit larger.
How all of this affects execution speed varies. AMD processors are generally faster running 64 bit code. Intel has been more of a mixed bag. One notable case was Intel's first 64-bit capable CPU, the Pentium D; its speed was limited by the CPU's ability to fetch instructions rather than by execution units, so the fact that code size stayed the same or grew by a bit meant that the same was true of execution speed.
Right, the 64-ness was that it was populated with the full 64K of RAM that an 8-bit machine can address.
But now you've wrecked the fun of my comment.