Fedora nearly dropped i686 earlier this year, and might do so soon. More specifically there was a proposal to stop building i686 kernels[1] which didn't go through but it did start a lot of discussion on the mailing list. Eventually it was decided to set up an x86 SIG for anyone interested in maintaining it[2][3]. It's yet to be seen how the SIG will work out.

[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Stop_Building_i686_Ke...

[2] https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1737

[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/x86

This is really only tangentially-related, but on the subject of removing architecture support, can I point out how annoying it is that Eclipse 4 does not target ARM architectures?

Look at this: http://archive.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.6-20...

Linux (x86/GTK+) Linux (x86_64/GTK+) Linux (PPC/GTK+) Linux (PPC64/GTK+) Linux (s390x/GTK+) Linux (s390/GTK+) Linux (PPC64LE/GTK+)

And yet no ARM...I'll bet more people use that than s390.

IBM is almost certainly committing dollars or people to make that s390 (and PPC64) support happen.

Is Eclipse still written in Java? I wonder why architecture support has to be added at all.

There very may well be other reasons, but a large one is that Eclipse is written using SWT, not AWT/Swing.

SWT is Java, and has a platform-independent API, but has platform-specific implementations. (SWT JARs are unique per OS/architecture)

I actually tried to build it from source.

Oh, god. What a monstrosity of a build system. And the documentation (or lack thereof)...here there be tygers.

I have Intel Atom netbooks that currently run Ubuntu wonderfully. But they are low RAM and the 32bit version runs better than the 64bit (if they can even run 64bit). I am worried I will have to drop Ubuntu and switch to plain Debian because of this.

Same. It's funny actually, last time I installed something on there I just assumed it was x86_64 and was thoroughly confused for a good few moments when the USB stick would not boot. But yeah, I, for one, still run Linux on i386 hardware. My netbook isn't obsolete. In fact, I don't think I can buy anything like it any more.

> My netbook isn't obsolete. In fact, I don't think I can buy anything like it any more.

That's pretty much the definition of obsolete

Antique ≠ obsolete

Funny that for other stuff it usually takes 100 years to be considered antique.

Wow... well you're completely sold on the whole planned obsolescence thing, aren't you? I suggest looking up obsolete in the dictionary.

I looked up obsolete in the Oxford English dictionary:

    No longer produced or used; out of date.

So, I think, by that definition, his point stands: it truly is the very definition of obsolete, as it is no longer produced.

Oh don't be silly. The "produced" part is obviously only applied to consumable items. Something is not obsolete because it is no longer manufactured. It might be obsolete if consumable parts for it are no longer manufactured. Nobody would use obsolete to refer to a tool that still performs its intended function but is no longer manufactured.

The Oxford English dictionary provides synonyms for obsolete. While 'fallen into disuse' is one synonym provided, another is 'discontinued'.

Your definition of obsolete, while correct, is not complete.

There's a crop of light, cheap Chinese laptops based on Atoms (well, they call them "Apollo Lake") which are the closes you can get to a modern day netbook. Google N3450 (the most popular CPU), or brands like Chuwi, Jumper or Onda.

Largely for the shadowbanned reply to this: For Linux tinkerers, there are tons of cheap Chromebooks with Apollo Lake that can be reflashed and/or put in dev mode and happily run regular Linux.

Where do you usually buy them from? Alibaba?

Banggood carries a lot of these lower-powered computers and phones if you like something that's more of a store instead of a buyer/seller marketplace.

Also a great place for DIY project supplies. They sell a lot of electronics parts, CNC bits (not sure about the quality), quadrocoptor parts, etc.

Do you plan on keeping those Atom machines for longer than 2021? Because otherwise it should not be an issue, as you can still use 16.04 with the latest patches until 2021.

How much better do the 32-bit versions run?

I still use my old second-hand Samsung N220 Plus occasionally when I'm travelling, as it's lighter than my main laptop and I can't afford a light + performant one.

I'd never actually considered whether to run 32-bit or 64-bit OS on it, and just installed the 64-bit by habit.

Hop on the final i686 LTS-type release of either Ubuntu or CentOS, and you'll be fine for a long time. RHEL4 was updated for like a decade after it first launched.

I wonder if it's time for ubuntu and friends to seriously consider ia32?

I use 32bit server images in VPS because the RAM usage is significantly lower. This is critical in VPS units with 512MB of RAM... I'm worried.

> I use 32bit server images in VPS because the RAM usage is significantly lower. This is critical in VPS units with 512MB of RAM... I'm worried.

You could use Debian x32 instead. 32 bit pointers but amd64 instruction set: https://wiki.debian.org/X32Port

The proposal explicitly calls to keep i386 as a target for containers.

You have 32bit support on 16.04 through 2021.

If by that point you can't just throw another 512 of RAM at the problem, I'd be worried. 1GB is already starting to become the lowest rung for VPS providers. That's the $5 plan at Linode, anyway. I fully expect that to be universal (or greater) in four years time.

And that's not to mention that while a little wider, 64bit is also faster. This could be a saving factor under load.

Same, I also get by with 512MB. If i686 support is dropped, I'd need to move up to 1GB, which comes with a considerable cost increase.

hmm, doesn't Linux have a mode where it keeps 32bit pointers even on x86_64? I remember reading about it.

x32 ABI. Although I've never heard of a Linux that's x32 only.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI

According to another comment made recently Debian has such a flavor:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15366955

Neat! It seems the main drawback is that you only have 4GB of virtual memory. I wonder whether it would be possible to create some sort of hybrid that allows access to more memory. (himem? long-pointers? separating data/code/stack into different regions?)

last time I checked it was nothing more then a PoC. Firefox was missing.

Use the netinst image, which is still being maintained.

Try a different distro?

That's what I was thinking. Arch switched to all x86_64 a few months ago (announced the phase-out) but, Arch would probably be just as lightweight. I'm not sure what DE it comes with

> I'm not sure what DE it comes with

None, the default install of Arch leaves you with a terminal prompt and basic utilities. You can install whatever you like from there. It's closer to something like the Debian minimal install than Ubuntu desktop.

I meant what does Ubuntu Server come with. Is it Unity too?

It doesn't come with one either, it's for servers. You can install the ubuntu-desktop package (which is basically what you get off of the desktop install disk) afterwards, though. Not really clear if that will still be option on i386, that is do a net install and then install ubuntu-desktop. It sounds to me like they are just retiring the installer images for i386 and not the desktop related packages, so if you really need it then you can go this route. I bet it won't be well tested/supported though.

On a related note, Unity is getting the axe and 17.10 will ship GNOME as the default DE.

Debian is the go to, they maintain niche architectures and ports almost to a fault.

The end of x86 32bit is near … And here I am trying to find an up to date distro for my G5s :D

Tl;dr opensource or not, market share dictates supported archs.

The only difference been, you can try to build from the sources for your vintage hardware.

I got an SSD on Friday and accidentally downloaded the 32-bit desktop ISO for 16.04 ... even with PAE on 8GB RAM with 8GB swap, it turns out 32-bit Firefox crashes when its virtual memory footprint gets too big ...

So yeah. 32-bit is now a specialist thing. Or you could use Debian.

16.04 is supported until 2021, so ...

32 bit is handy in development because you can run more than one.

On most processors you can only run one 64 bit VM, but as many 32 bit VMs as you can handle.

Now I'm curious: Which hypervisor has that limitation?

It's more that any consumer grade processor seems to have this limitation.

I have an i7-6700HQ for example, and I can either have Hyper-V turned on (I'm on Windows) in which case I can only run 32-bit VM's with VirtualBox, or I can turn off Hyper-V in which case I can run one 64-bit VM on VirtualBox, and then only 32-bit VM's past that.

If I'm doing Android development, I can't run a 64-bit VM at the same time as the Android emulator is 64-bit.

Sometimes I want to run my web server, an Android VM, and maybe a Redis server on Ubuntu in a VM. I can't emulate Android and run a 64-bit VM, so the 32-bit Ubuntu distro is invaluable here.

The fun thing is that I think Ubuntu has not been bothering with non-PAE kernels for years now I think.

Do people actually use x86 for IoT?

Glad to see 32bit intel being dropped.

I hadn't considered this, but I wonder if in a few years AMD will have more leverage against Intel because everyone uses AMD64?

    Discontinue to provide for i386
    * Server classic img/iso
    * Desktop live

Oh, they just mean 32-bit x86. I thought for a moment this was Ubuntu killing Linux on the desktop.

x86_64 is still available... I don't know the last time I personally used an i386 image from anything.