Hi On Tue, Sep 08, 2026 at 02:02:35PM -0500, Timothy N. Gaskell wrote: > Does Debian have a dedicated mailing list or other gathering place for > people interested in supporting modern Debian on older > 32-bit PC hardware? I looked for something similar to what we have for > other vintage platforms in the form of the debian-68k and debian-alpha > mailing lists but didn't find anything.
No, Debian does not have a dedicated list for this. In the past it was not necessary and [email protected] is still considered the right location for amd64, as this is what most people have. > I would love to connect with others in the community who feel that > support for turn-of-the-millennium hardware that is still supported by > the Linux kernel upstream but for which we do not package kernels is > the most significant missing feature of Debian as "The universal > operating system". So you also don't understand what the scope of the remaining Debian i386 distribution is. Not only does it not have a kernel, it is also not supported on 32bit hardware, but requires x86-64-v1, the same as amd64. And given that it does not have a 64bit time_t, you will need to backdate systems in the future. > I'm fully capable of doing my own thing on my own hardware, but since > multiple people are likely interested in this area, I'd love to keep up > on what others are doing to avoid reinventing the wheel. We waited for years for people to come up with a plan for a new x86-32 capable architecture, but nothing showed up. So while people talked about it on several occasions, noone was able to get something started. So, such a new architecture needs - a new name and GNU tuple, - maybe an ELF ABI identifier (not sure how that works, as I don't know if we have an example), - 64bit off_t, - 64bit time_t. Bastian -- Only a fool fights in a burning house. -- Kank the Klingon, "Day of the Dove", stardate unknown
