this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Not really true. Plenty of Linux distributions dropped 32bit support years ago and 32bit systems are a lot younger than 20 years (last ones were some Intel Atoms released around 2010).
When talking about Linux desktops it includes distros like Debian, who will support i386 until, at least 2028. Even some fast moving distros like OpenSuse Tumbleweed still support i386.
I'm running crunchbang++ on my i686 box.
Can I play command and conquer on all i386 Linux install? Otherwise I'm sticking with DOS.
OpenRA
I have Linux running strongly on two laptops from 2007. If I still had my old Dell from 2003, I'd bet I could get the latest Puppy Linux running on it. Maybe even something like Debian or Arch32, if I maxed out the RAM.
I've tried Arch32 a while ago, the project isn't that well maintained (like I appreciate they're trying), I've had MX Linux before, worked great, just a bit outdated, I moved my 32bit machine to Void Linux, it seems to have the best support yet ! I'm running cutting edge kernel and dev tools on that old fart
"32bit systems are a lot younger than 20 years"
I don't follow. The i386 is almost 40 years old now. Can you elaborate?
it may have began 4 decades ago, but what matters is that only one decade ago new hardware was still being released.
And new processors stopped supporting x86-32 a decade ago?
Except with that new 64 bit only thing Intel is trying to do, all x86_64 processors have 16-bit and 32-bit mode for backwards compatibility reasons, the processors actually start at 16-bit mode and are raised by the UEFI (or previously, the OS/bootloader) to 64-bit mode. In fact, if your UEFI supports CSM, you can flash MS-DOS 6.22 onto a USB stick and boot from it, and it'll treat it as a floppy drive (many BIOS implementations use floppy disks to emulate usb mass storage devices).
nope, new processors still do. At least on intel/amd processors. it's only software that decided to drop support
Ya, 64 bit was becoming more common/standard 16ish years ago with vista right? I remember I had to get vista even though I didn't want to because it had support for 64 but.