After a recent meetup in Cambridge, Debian developers are discussing how to start gradually dropping x86-32 support.

At the end of November, some of the Debian development team met at a [1]mini-DebConf in Cambridge (not any of the Cambridges in Canada, Australasia, the Caribbean, the USA, or any of those other [2]copycat Cambridges ).

One immediately visible result is a message entitled " [3]Bits from the Release Team " on the [4]debian-devel-announce mailing list , with significant news: The end of the line for Debian as a 32-bit distro is approaching. Note, though, this doesn't mean that 32-bit support is going away altogether. Not yet anyway.

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The news is in a section titled "A future for the i386 architecture":

Insofar as they still do, we anticipate that the kernel, d-i and images teams will cease to support i386 in the near future.

There is a bit of internal project jargon here which we suspect bears clarifying. First, i386 is the [6]Debian project's term for x86-32. This doesn't mean the actual 80386 from the 1980s: the Linux kernel dropped support for that [7]way back in 2012 . Most OS projects now talk about [8]i686 , which is generally taken to mean 32-bit Intel chips from the [9]original Pentium Pro or Pentium II onward.

We suspect that "kernel" is fairly self-explanatory, although you may not know that the Debian project includes [10]a number of kernels of which the Linux kernel is only one. The abbreviation "d-i" [11]means the Debian Installer , and "images" is the project's term for [12]installable CD and DVD media .

[13]

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It continues:

Following that, there are two routes into running i386:

as a multi-arch option on an otherwise amd64 system

as an i386 chroot on another architecture system

To paraphrase, Debian will continue to support the x86-32 architecture for a while yet, but the developers plan to stop building 32-bit x86 kernels, as well as installation media and a version of the Debian installation program for 32-bit x86 machines (this is only about x86: Debian still supports a number of other 32-bit architectures, including Arm and MIPS).

[15]Linux Kernel of the Beast 6.6.6 exorcised by angelic 6.6.7 update

[16]Linux Mint 21.3 and Zorin 17 are beta buddies

[17]Kernel kerfuffle kiboshes Debian 12.3 release

[18]Systemd 255 is here with improved UKI support

Debian users will still be able to install a 32-bit userland, run 32-bit Debian inside various types of container, and build applications for x86-32… but you can expect that the x86 version of Debian 13 "Trixie", which is planned for 2025, will only support 64-bit hardware.

This doesn't prevent someone else building a kernel and their own installation media, of course. Quite a few of Debian's [19]supported architectures have "unofficial" status, and i386 could join them.

One of Debian's major roles is as a basis for others to build their own distributions. Distrowatch [20]lists 125 of these and there may be more. Not many of those still offer 32-bit editions, but a handful do, including [21]a version of Slax as well as [22]Peppermint OS , [23]plus antiX , recent Reg FOSS desk favorite [24]MX Linux , and [25]many others . This is going to make life quite a lot more difficult for the downstream disties, and we suspect that most will respond by just dropping x86-32 versions.

[26]

There are also some non-Debian based distros that still offer 32-bit editions, including openSUSE Tumbleweed, Alpine Linux, Mageia, Gentoo, and Void Linux… and we suspect that NetBSD isn't going to drop i386 any time soon either. ®

Get our [27]Tech Resources



[1] https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEvents/gb/2023/MiniDebConfCambridge

[2] https://www.geodatos.net/en/homonymous-cities/cambridge

[3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/2023/12/msg00003.html

[4] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/

[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZYHMNBEIf6kVi0iAxoO98wAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0

[6] https://wiki.debian.org/i386

[7] https://www.theregister.com/2012/12/12/linux_no_longer_runs_on_386_cpus/

[8] https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=482324&seqNum=17

[9] https://www.theregister.com/1999/02/14/two_years_ago_pentium_pro/

[10] https://wiki.debian.org/Kernel

[11] https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/amd64/ch01s04.en.html

[12] https://www.debian.org/CD/http-ftp/

[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZYHMNBEIf6kVi0iAxoO98wAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[14] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZYHMNBEIf6kVi0iAxoO98wAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[15] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/14/linux_kernel_of_the_beast/

[16] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/mint_21_3_zorin_17/

[17] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/12/kernel_6_1_ext4_corruption/

[18] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/08/systemd_255_is_here/

[19] https://wiki.debian.org/SupportedArchitectures

[20] https://distrowatch.com/search-mobile.php?basedon=Debian

[21] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/24/slax_11_2/

[22] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/05/peppermint_os_and_slax_both/

[23] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/01/antix_23/

[24] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/03/mx_linux_23/

[25] https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/18/disentangling_the_debian_derivatives/

[26] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/oses&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZYHMNBEIf6kVi0iAxoO98wAAABQ&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0

[27] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/