#i386 machines running #Debian 12 Bookworm
Debian 13 drops support for i386, which is bad news for my parents’ laptops. I don’t have the time to help them hop on a different distro right now, but I wonder if anybody here is in the same boat.
@[email protected] and @[email protected], my two faves, still offer support. FreeBSD demoted i386 to tier 2 in 2021. What else is out there?
Just stick with bookworm? It’ll have LTS support until 2033. Though you really should consider replacing hardware that old.
My father had given my grandma a 486 (or maybe even 386) laptop with Windows 3.11 when that was already severely outdated. As a result I can now listen to her memoirs because she was able to type them up in Word.
What I want to say is, if the machine is working for them just leave it be. Especially with the LTS.
Sure, I’ve got some ancient machines myself but I don’t try to run the latest the software on them. Only reason for that is if you need to use them on the internet in which case for security and compatibility it’s better to use newer hardware.
Honestly, I get wanting to keep using those laptops and that a perk of Linux is extending a device’s usable lifespan, but the last i386 machines are probably ~20 years old at this point; I think an upgrade is justified.
You can score an old AMD64 machine for next to nothing these days - you might even find something throwing one out; I think the sweet spot is a 1st or 2nd generation Intel Core i Series machine.
A possible option is to stick to Debian 13, but use a hand-built kernel, since Debian 13 still includes the i386 port. Of course, it also depends on your exact CPU and other hardware as well as what you want to run in it.
@foxy @alpinelinux @VoidLinux @debian I switched to Slackware 15 for 32 bit support about 2 years ago… Debian and systemd is too heavy for i386 hardware
