At Fri, 27 Feb 2026 10:43:24 -0500 Stefan Monnier <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Well, one of things I pleasantly discovered on Debian 13, is though it > > no longer supports i386 as installable nor provides i386 (686) 32-bit > > kernels, it does still have most everything else still available in i386 > > architecture. > > IIUC one of the main use-cases of the i386 port nowadays is to support > running old (proprietary) i386 binaries in virtual machines. As long as > that's kept as one of the goals, then indeed you should be fine if you > can find some other kernel (either from an older Debian or one you > compiled yourself) Actually, you don't need a virtual machines to run i386 binaries -- you just need the i386 shared libraries. An x86_64 cpu can *natively* run i386 code, and a x86_64 kernel can load 32-bit programs and run them in 32-bit mode. > > Currently I'm using the above setup for my trusty Thinkpad X30. > I don't know how long that'll last, tho. > > As others have pointed out, it's hard to justify the effort to maintain > that port since there's a lot of amd64-capable hardware being discarded > anyway. In my case, I use my Thinkpad to project the PDF slides when > I teach, where the main value is to show to my students that a computer > older than them can still get regular updates, so they should consider > it *unacceptable* their much more recent devices stop receiving updates. > > It's also a good conversation piece when I explain to them that back > when I received that computer, the rate of hardware improvement > suggested that by 2026 we'd have laptops with TBs of RAM and thousands > of CPUs running at >100GHz, so I would have never imagined back then > finding this Thinkpad still usable in 2026 with anything vaguely > resembling modern software. > > When Debian finally drops support for i386, I guess I'll just move to > the 3 years older T60 (where I already upgraded the CPU to run amd64), > which is actually a lot more usable (for many/most tasks, I don't > really notice much difference between that and a modern machine). > > > === Stefan > > > -- Robert Heller -- Cell: 413-658-7953 GV: 978-633-5364 Deepwoods Software -- Custom Software Services http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Linux Administration Services [email protected] -- Webhosting Services
