i wouldn’t recommend debian since they’ve dropped 32 bit support in trixie, their latest release. the previous release, bookworm, still supports 32 bits archs, but it eol’s less than a year from now
From trixie, i386 is no longer supported as a regular architecture: there is no official kernel and no Debian installer for i386 systems
[…]
Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to trixie. Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as amd64, where possible, or retiring the hardware.
but the debian i386 architecture means all 32 bit x86 processors. there’s no “i686” build of debian
there are no i586 or i686 kernel or iso available, you can look for them. i386 packages only exist for compatibility reasons, so you can run 32 bit applications on amd64 machines. please read the release notes
maybe compatibility reasons. i guess they used to support i386 back in the day and didn’t want to break the couple of systems that were installed on bo and have been upgrading ever since
i wouldn’t recommend debian since they’ve dropped 32 bit support in trixie, their latest release. the previous release, bookworm, still supports 32 bits archs, but it eol’s less than a year from now
This is not true. (Edit: nevermind, I was wrong)
They’re dropping support for i586 and below. 32-bit systems with i686+ processors will still run fine.
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.html#reduced-support-for-i386
Not all 32-bit systems are i386. For example, my 32-bit Debian thinkpad runs Trixie just fine. Because it’s i686 which is still supported.
So again, Debian 13 isn’t dropping 32-bit support. Just i586 support and below.
but the debian i386 architecture means all 32 bit x86 processors. there’s no “i686” build of debian
there are no i586 or i686 kernel or iso available, you can look for them. i386 packages only exist for compatibility reasons, so you can run 32 bit applications on amd64 machines. please read the release notes
https://wiki.debian.org/i386
That was very confusing to me. I’m sure they have their reasons, but calling it something like x86 would’ve been more clear to me.
https://wiki.debian.org/SupportedArchitectures
maybe compatibility reasons. i guess they used to support i386 back in the day and didn’t want to break the couple of systems that were installed on bo and have been upgrading ever since
I was wrong. Thank you. And I don’t have Trixie on the 32-bit Thinkpad, it was my other laptop.