Hi,
On Wed, Feb 25, 2026 at 05:17:10PM -0800, Michael Paoli wrote:
> So, where there is need/desire to keep Debian running long(er) term on
> x86 32-bit ("i386") (e.g. Pentium class chips that are not at all
> 64-bit), what's the best way to go about that?
I don't think it is a very good use of your resources to do so, but they
are your resources so you be the judge of that.
Personally I would be looking for newer used hardware. The fact that
Windows 11 doesn't support some pretty recent CPUs means that there is
currently a good supply of very cheap yet still quite capable computers
available. Sometimes so much so that they can be had for free.
> upgraded to Debian 13, and with that configuration, the Debian 12
> kernels also do still receive their (security, etc.) updates (through
> oldstable, and later LTS, maybe even ELTS). Meanwhile, all else is
> supported and current under stable{,-{updates,security}} (and likewise
> oldstable for the kernels). I'm also wondering how that's likely to
> play out going forward, as Debian 14, etc. are released.
I think it's quite likely that LTS team decide to not support i386 for
the usual length of LTS.
I also think it's quite likely that some key part of the system that is
needed for booting but isn't typically needed for 32-bit apps on 64-bit
OS< such as say, systemd, stops being available in i386 packages. You
would be able to keep using the last versions but miss out on security
updates, and more and more dependencies get broken.
You can also be using an upstream i686 kernel that you compile yourself
and keep running a Debian 13 (and then 14) userland on top of that, but
its unsupported nature and the increasing amount of work that you make
for yourself is serious technical debt. You can reduce the work a bit by
switching to a Linux distribution that still supports i686. Very quickly
I think it stops making sense versus obtaining newer but still second
hand 64-bit system.
Finally, I would not be surprised to see upstream kernel drop i686
builds soon.
We are getting past the point that running 32-bit x86 hardware is a
rational decision as opposed to a sentimental one, so it's hard to give
objective advice.
Thanks,
Andy
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