[sf-lug] A short and simple survey

[Justin Noor]

Last November 2017, Arch Linux formally dropped 32- bit support. There is,
however, a community maintained fork.

https://archlinux32.org/

Arch did a good job phasing it out. It was announced well in advance,
involving a nine month depreciation period. Also as mentioned, some
community members came together to maintain a 32-bit fork. I’m not sure how
well it is maintained.

https://www.archlinux.org/news/the-end-of-i686-support/


On Tue, Oct 9, 2018 at 6:57 PM Michael Paoli <Michael.Paoli at cal.berkeley.edu>
wrote:

> > From: "Bobbie Sellers" <bliss-sf4ever at dslextreme.com>
> > Subject: [sf-lug] A short and simple survey
> > Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2018 14:11:13 -0700
>
> > Hi LUGers,
> >
> >       I have decided to do a little survey about who may still be
> > running 32 bit machines on the LUG mailing list and who might still
>
> Yes, still running "32-bit" machines (at least semi-regularly)
>
> > be open to using other distributions than they have currently installed.
>
> Other distributions? ... probably not - at least not for general
> installation(s), anyway.
>
> > You can reply to me off the list if you don't want to write back
> > to the list.
> >
> >       Respond please if you are using a 32 bit machine and are at all
> > interested in changing distributions
>
> 32-bit yes, interested in changing distributions - not really.
>
> >       Question one: Are you using a 32 bit machine?
> Yes, sometimes - have 2 or 3 such systems, depending how one counts.
>
>
> >       Question two: How much RAM memory do you have in your computer?
> one has 64 MiB 8-O, another 512 MiB (and the other that could be counted
> is mostly a virtualization of the 2nd ... except when it's physical, which
> sometimes it is).
>
> >       Question two: part 1. More than three Gigabytes of memory?
> No.
>
> >       Are you interested in changing the operating system on your
> > computer whether you use 32 bit or 64 bit machines?
> Changing the operating system is a different question than changing the
> distribution.  I regularly change the operating system - most notably
> security and bug fix updates.  I very much like Debian, so, as for
> distributions, that's mostly what I run.  I occasionally run other
> distribution(s), e.g. for testing on some virtual machines.
> Work is a bit different - folks often pay me to run inferior operating
> systems ... whatever.
>
> >       Thanks for any on-topic responses.
> >
> >       Bobbie
>
> FYI, also, what "32-bit" is supported, does often quite depend on CPU
> and features.  Some that have been or are generally being successively
> dropped by kernels/distributions, in approximate sequence ...
> '386 dropped, but '486 supported ...
> 586/Pentium ... drop of '486, then
> Pentium without PAE if I recall correctly, ... drop of '586 but still
> '686 supported, and ... ultimately drop of 32-bit (anything that doesn't
> at least support and run 64-bit).
>
> Linux kernel long ago dropped support of 386 (i80386), though the "386"
> naming persists in many distributions.  Many distributions well document
> exactly what 32-bit they do/don't support (not only CPU minimums and
> recommended, but also other minimums/recommended for distribution).
> However
> some distributions don't document this very well at all - e.g. just give a
> "recommended" and can't be bothered to spell out what a minimum
> usable/supportable configuration is.
>
>
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> Related Information <br>
> http://www.shallowsky.com/blog/<br>
> http://explainshell.com/ <br>
>
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