Hello everyone, Is it correct that debian 13 is planned to be released without an i386 iso and i386 is planned to be deprecated? If so, I'd like to ask to reconsider this seeing as there is still a plethora of i386 machines and i386 is as of now still the second most used architecture according to popcon with 8437 reports there, if I understand correctly. I personally use the i386 version on multiple machines, including a ThinkPad T60 (on which I'm writing this on) and a Transmeta Efficeon, which I'm using as a router and access point.
I personally don't understand why you'd want to deprecate i386, especially if you compare it to other official architectures (s390, ppc64el and armel have way less reports on popcon. I don't want to suggest to deprecate any of these architectures, but just compare the amount of users there). For many tasks an i386 machine still offers more than enough capabilities and deprecating i386 now would brick many otherwise completely functional machines. Just not shipping an i386 iso would still be deprecating an architecture, as many people don't have the knowledge and/or patience to set up debian over debootstrap which would again practically brick i386 machines for many users. Also, deprecating i386 would probably make it difficult or downright impossible for downstream distributions to themself keep the i386 version maintained, as they'd have to invest much more effort to keep i386. Is there a reason to do this? If so, what would be required to keep the i386 version, seeing as it still is important and used? regards, Maite Gamper (zeldakatze)
