On Fri, Feb 07, 2025 at 04:50:49PM -0600, K0LNY ?? wrote: > Hi Andrew, > Yes, thanks, I did also write to Oralux, but haven't heard back yet. > Sad about no more 32 bit Debian after the next release.
There will be 32 bit libraries available in the next release, just not an installer. Kernel builds for Intel 32 bit are no longer available in the upstream kernel after 6.11 or so. Intel/AMD 32 bit libraries will still be available and work for you to run legacy software but it will be a partial release and likely completely gone after Trixie in five years. There's talk of a possible full port but there's also the 32 bit time issue for 2038 coming up. Any port would have to move to 64 bit time and possibly be incompatible with older software. If there aren't enough people stepping up to maintain x86 now, there will be even fewer to maintain a port which will require a full archive rebuild. You reference an Asus eeePC 701. That's from 2007 or so - so at this point is 18 years old. It has a 4G SSD and ? 1G ? memory running at 533MHz. Nice small, silent machine - I had one and upgraded the memory to 2G - but now massively obsolete. If you have one still running and you use it daily - I'm surprised, I'd have assumed the SSD would have died a long time ago with wear so you've done well. At this point, 32 bit Intel/AMD machines have barely been produced for 15 years. The Debian 32 bit images have been built primarily on 64 bit machines because nobody has hardware and because of memory limitations. Debian is the last major Linux to provide 32 bit images - Ubuntu stopped a few years ago, as did Red Hat and CentOS. (Slackware still provides 15.0 as 32 bit and Slackware64 15.0 as 64 bit - but that was released three years ago). It's dead, Jim :) > I was thinking that there was a Raspbian for X86, maybe that will maintain a > 32 bit version? Raspberry Pi Desktop for x86 still seems to be for Debian Bullseye with a kernel 5.10 also from three years ago. If they've not updated it, then when Debian 32 bit dies it will also die. Debian Bullseye itself is now out of mainstream Debian support and in the hands of Freexian as LTS. Just acquire a 64 bit laptop from someone whose machine is underpowered on Windows 10 or wait a few months for the world to find that their perfectly good machines won't run Windows 11 and have to be scrapped after October. [That's an amateur radio callsign - you may even find that a radio buddy will give you an old laptop for free as they upgrade.] All the very best, as ever, Andrew Cater (also G0EVX) (amaca...@debian.org) > Glenn >
