Debian Linux Begins Dropping 32 Bit CPU Support

40 thoughts on “Debian Linux Begins Dropping 32 Bit CPU Support”

• Before you comment that Debian already dropped i386 support, watch up to the part where I say Debian and other Linux devs use i386 to mean not i386 and instead i686

  Side note: Steam and wine are not in danger, 32 bit software runs on 64 bit hardware otherwise they would have broke a decade ago

• Hear about the IBM/RH hiring bullshit?

• There are plenty of 32-bit 486 systems out there *that are brand new and supported*, the Vortex86 line is a currently supported x86 clone processor running the 486 instruction set at up to 800MHz. It's popular in embedded x86 systems. If you go to a fast food place, the keypad they use to go through the pending orders if a PC running a Vortex86 processor. The platform itself can run DOS, Windows (9x-ish, not sure if XP can run on a 486., but NT4 can), and Linux. It is completely modern with 512MB of DDR3 RAM, and SD card for emulated IDE hard drive storage. It's not the latest and fastest PC out there, but if you're just taking orders over a network and showing them on a monitor (which can be HDMI), you don't need that much computing power. But hey, it's out there, you can buy them brand new right now and used in embedded applications. https://www.vortex86.com/ is the official website for these processors. And if it sounds familiar, yes, it's been used to build brand new retro PCs/

• I daily drive a Samsung P30. It’s my writing laptop. It also happens to be from 2004 and has a Pentium M inside.

  Edit: Ofc, it isn’t my only daily driver but losing support for it would still suck. Running Void so, for now, I’ll be fine…

• are there still any 32 bit CPU still active out there? i think they are dinosours at this point. i have an old netbook that basically a 12 year old product. and its donning 64 bit CPU and UEFI supports etc. i dont think there are still any 32 bit computers stilla ctive out there.

• x86 doesn't mean it's 32-bit

• Stop waving your arms about.

• I forgot Debian still supported 32-bit systems. For me at home and all the systems we have at work, we've moved on from 32-bit systems over a decade ago. I don't see a need to maintain 32-bit support unless you have some stubborn old software that for what ever reason, does not want to run on a 64-bit system and you absolutely need to have it.

  This is like the 16-bit to 32-bit transition all over again. For those of us who remember it, 16-bit support had to be cut off at some point and there were some hold outs that didn't want to move to 32-bit protected mode. Long story short, they were left behind. 32-bit CPUs could run 16-bit operating systems and hardware, but eventually it became impractical to keep trying to run them.

  While the 32-bit to 64-bit transition has been drawn out much longer than the 16-bit to 32-bit transition, the same thing has to happen eventually. 32-bit support will go away and the old software/hardware will be left behind. Eventually, you may only be able to run 32-bit software in either a virtual machine or an emulator that emulates the old hardware. For many, emulating the old 8-bit and 16-bit hardware is the only way they can run software for hardware from that era (well known for gaming with console emulators, but emulators for complete PCs from that era do exist now like PCem).

  I also agree with the misuse of i386 for the 32-bit architecture. x86 is a better "catch all" term for it. With the later 32-bit CPUs, the instruction set was extended in addition to faster clock rates so it's definitely incorrect to use i386 for the entire 32-bit architecture. It just makes it more confusing than it needs to be for people looking back at older architectures and trying to learn what they were all about and how current architectures built off them.

• I actually installed 32-bit Debian on a 2010 era netbook I picked up from an old friend that was planning to throw it away. Truth be told, I only used the device for an afternoon ever since. I should have just let her chuck it in the bin … 😜

• Great video Brodie, I personally think they should just drop 32bit as a whole like what apple did with macOS and such…. I also would like to see games running more on 64 bit as a lot of games still require 32 bit and even steam client…. though having 32 bit dropped could kick devs in the arse to update the stack to 64 bit only … over time it will basically end up being only 64 bit as we go more and more into the future as 128bit will be on the rise soon.

• You said that 32-bit CPUs are not being made anymore. That's not true. There are a lot of modern single-board computers and microcontrollers powered by 32-bit CPUs, they're just not from the x86 family.

• Distro that supports out of the box x86 uefi and 64 bit CPU is fedora. But to run every distro you just use ventoy (I don't know if it would boot after install without any changes, but live enviroment from standard iso works).

  Btw. Absolutely hilarous is that windows can't boot 64 bit system from 32bit uefi, so even out of the box version of windows on these systems is 32bit

  Another wired thing is that I have tried to install opensuse on 32bit laptop and it only works in wayland mode. It means that not only graphical enviroment needs to be wayland but also display manager. I don't know if it is opensuse thing or combination of this laptop and opensuse (other distros are working on x11 fine)

• I have 32 bit hardware but TBH I haven't run any of it in years. Okay, over a decade…

• i have a laptop with a intel pentium M but it is a old a battery less laptop, so it doesn't rellay matter to me

• I loaded up Debain 12 32 bit on an old lenovo thinkpad a few weeks back. Overall ran ok, but firefox was dog slow and I couldn't change the wifi pcie card because of a locked bios ( I hot swapped the card after the bios check but that was annoying.) Overall I agree with Debian, at least my hardware is just a little too old to be useful even as a bootloader for firefox so why bother?

• OpenSUSE tumbleweed can be used instad

• So what consequences will this have for downstream distros such as AntiX?

  I'm still running a Pentium III laptop with AntiX 23, and I hope to keep it up to date for years to come.

• i 486 is extremely important to keep it will be required for making it run on modern intel me once someone finds out how to bypass signing check

• The Debian post is a little confusing to me. It's been brought up that this is just about the installer – d-i and images. So 32-bit still exists, you just can't install it. Which begs the questions of why still have it other than some libraries needed for gaming, but I digress. Anyway, then bringing up the kernel team sounds like they are dropping it entirely. So which is it?

  Every time dropping 32bit gets brought up, people come out of the woodworks talking about some Atom CPU that intel distributed right up to late 2010's I think.
  They aren't completely wrong, but nobody is running Atom CPUs on a frequently used machine that isn't some appliance you don't install new kernels on. Or if there are, those 5 people don't matter.

  Regardless, I think dropping 32bit x86 is long overdue. Any step in that direction is a good thing.

• Nice hair cut! 👍
  I have 4 32bit linux systems. These are old machines i used for work over the years and just put them over on a shelf when i upgraded. Some are reclaimed from the work dumpster that i just wiped and installed linux on. I just recently put debian 11 on an old 2005 Dell that has an Intel Celeron. So, ya the machines still work and i guess will just end up being dosbox emu machines 😀

• I have a pentium 4 system still.
  But I guess it's fair they don't want to support it anymore. Can always run old versions anyway. When I want to mess around with it I will just use an old version. Supporting old stuff gotta slow down developement a lot, so better stop dealing with it at one point.

• All my 32bit systems are ARM-based, so I don't really care too much about this. As you said, time goes on and Debian has a limited workforce, so kicking out some old dead, meat, won't be much of a deal…

• My tablet pc that I use everyday is a dell venue 10 pro which has a intel atom cherrytrail cpu which is the last intel atoms. It can run 64bit linux, the problem is it has 32bit uefi which means I'am one of those people who do a lot of reading. If grub drops 32bit this tablet pc will be done….

• They're ending x86_32 support, and here I am trying to figure out how to implement x86_16 instruction decoding in Logisim Evolution.

• I think even the 32 bit version of Raspberry Pi OS will install a 64 bit kernel if possible.

• Running 32 bit OS on 64bit capable platforms used to be popular on systems with 4GB and less memory. Given memory in common module formats is cheap these days, should only be a concern with systems that cannot take more installed memory, or that need really exotic and expensive memory modules.

  —-

  32 bit linux systems as a multiboot option are popular with retrocomputer enthusiasts – not as a main system necessarily, but as a maintenance system often, the main OS being something more "period correct", given the ease with which hardware can be tested and partitions can be imaged and reimaged from a linux system. It is debatable whether having an up to date system for these use cases is essential (usually not used to access random/dubious internet content, and usually an enthusiast will keep such systems on their own policed network or at least certainly behind a trusted router – not using them as mobile devices on random wifi).

  —-

  Often, the real reason to want to keep 32bit era systems running is support for old expansion buses (eg ISA/EISA/VLB). However, other recent developments in the linux space might make very current distributions unsuitable for running a desktop on such hardware anyway – the graphics cards will be best served by DDX/XAA type X11 servers which are being phased out.

  —-

  Tbh, most any 32bit only system will be challenged running a 2023 web browser displaying 2023 web content well (a 32bit x86 computer that could even play a modern youtube clip with no issue will be rather high end) , so 32bit x86 might really be best left to specialty distributions, not trying to keep a full featured port in sync.

  —–

  OTOH, let's not forget people in the 1970s paid big for computers roughly equivalent in performance (CDC/Cray) to a basic 686 system – and solved big problems with it.

  —–

  The early 2000s had a big uncertainty about future dominant architectures. It made developers value portability – even Windows NT was released for several non x86 architectures. That need probably did good things in the end. Needing to accomodate portability forces certain code quality traits.

• Just a few months ago I replaced a relative's HP laptop from 2005 with a 2009 laptop because Linux Mint dropped 32-bit support in their main edition. While the Debian edition of Linux Mint does still have 32-bit support, there was some other incompatibility, so I'm not sure how much longer it makes sense to maintain it.

  (While I could have given them a more recent laptop, the 2009 laptop is perfectly capable of viewing Gmail in Firefox and printing PDFs and required the least work to get running. They don't use it for literally anything else.)

• If you think that bookworm just launched this year you still have 2.5 years of active support + 2 years of LTS support on bookworm. At the time you loose support your device will be almost 20 years old if you bought the last Atom CPU that is 32 Bit launched in 2010. Thats assuming that you bought THE LAST x86 32 Bit CPU.

  If youre running a 20+ years old hardware you will have to start going to more niche distros…

• Yeah, their i386 for i686-only support was confusing for me.

  I have one 32bit system running Debian. My old trusty Asus eee 1000, which actually still has a use-case suprisingly.

  Its a 12-volt powered laptop, which is ideal for doing mobile stuff with Amateur Radio. It can't run some of the more advanced apps, but it can do digital modes just fine. 12-volt powered laptops are hard to find.

  Its also got an atom, so its not subject to specrre/meltdown because it doesn't do speculative execution.

  Still, its dog-slow sometimes (especially for web browsing). I understand Debian will have to move on one day. Funny enough that Mesa just added back support for the graphics chipset. So I'm running modern Swaywm on this old thing. I'm grateful for the time I've had with it, and I'm grateful Debian has supported it this long. I'm also grateful to have an excuse to find something newer.

• My worry is just apps that still want 32-bit packages, mainly Steam and Wine. I hope Steam moves to pure 64-bit soon and for Wine, I haven't heard news about WinPE and WoW64 as much as I did last year. I'm hoping it'll be fine as I really would love to use MS Office in CrossOver without all the mess of the 32-bit requirements.

• Only a matter of time before the hardware fails too😅

• My problem is that I have a netbook in my fleet of PCs that has a dual core 32-bit Atom CPU…maybe I will have to somehow get ReactOS working…

• The biggest issues I see with this are around VIA's and Cyrix's newer CPUs which are not fully x86_64 compliant, and for the most part still are x86 32-bit CPUs…. These are mostly sold still in China and in other far-east countries, which are either trying to avoid licensing the x86_64 ISE from AMD, or just plain don't want to deal with import/export restrictions from the US.

• This is going to be a problem for people using ultra portables and highly integrated desktops with newer 32 bit only Atom CPUs that are not really suitable for anything but linux

• Dropping 32 bit support could cause a lot of consequences. I know there are many industry level hardware systems that will still use a i386 or i486 because:
  1: it still works
  2: they don't feel the need to upgrade
  3: there is a specific piece of software that ONLY WORKS on that one system

  if Debian fully drops 32 bit support, it could mean that these systems will have to stick with a old version of Debian and soon enough. there will be problems that arise.

• good… yeah, i said it

• I guess nothing changed in regards to 32 bit ARM support

• Guess I need to buy my parents new Laptops… Thanks Debian… you make tech support easier for 6 years and now this…

• As much as I don't like it I can understand why 32-bit support is going away. It's long past the end of an era and the last of 32-bit computing is slowly burning out.

• There are still modernized 486-based embedded SOCs. Turns out if you modernize and die shrink a 486, it's quite power efficient and cheap to produce. Intel discontinued their Quark line (a 486 with a Pentium II ISA plus ARC and neuromorphic cores and some other bits and bobs) last year (and the last new one was 2019) but the 486 has been licensed out to third parties and I think are still made on fab tech that's outdated for desktop and mobile but fine for automotive, industrial and some other low-cost embedded uses. Granted, you're less likely to slap a GUI on them so there's a large swath of stuff you could probably just not bother retaining 32bit support for. The Quark wasn't well marketed but you may remember Intel's Galileo and Edison boards as well as the Adruino 101 which were based on SOCs in the Quark line. All of them run Linux.

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