• i386 in Debian 13 Trixie

    From M Goppold@21:1/5 to All on Mon Aug 7 19:40:01 2023
    Greetings People!!

    Seems in the testing cd-s, I dont see i386 at all anymore. https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/

    I tried web searches to find out the status of debian and i386.  But I couldnt find any information.  Maybe its due to the deterioration of some search engines.

    Is there a removal going on that I havent heard about?  Is it related to Intel's x86S spec?

    Sincerely,
    Mike Goppold
    mgoppold5@yahoo.com

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  • From Andy Simpkins@21:1/5 to M Goppold on Mon Aug 7 22:30:01 2023
    On 7 August 2023 18:22:09 BST, M Goppold <mgoppold5@yahoo.com> wrote: >Greetings People!!

    Seems in the testing cd-s, I dont see i386 at all anymore. >https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/weekly-builds/

    I tried web searches to find out the status of debian and i386.  But I couldnt find any information.  Maybe its due to the deterioration of some search engines.

    Is there a removal going on that I havent heard about?  Is it related to Intel's x86S spec?

    Sincerely,
    Mike Goppold
    mgoppold5@yahoo.com



    Hi there Mike

    Thanks for reaching out.

    Yes we have stopped producing installation media images for i386.

    As a project Debian still supports i386, and will continue to provide
    updates via the usual apt repositories. This will continue throughout
    the Trixie life-cycle.

    There is a rapidly vanishingly small number of people who actually need
    a new installation on the i386 platform.
    Most users should find that the AMD64 version works just fine for them,
    after all new 32 bit Intel compatible processors that are not also
    natively AMD64 systems haven't been manufactured for many years.

    In the cases where you need to keep an existing machine going then you
    can still upgrade from a previous bookworm installation, security
    updates and the i368 repositories are not going anywhere.

    And for those people who want to keep using old software at a given
    version, for example retro-gaming, or big company account packages, then running a newer version of Debian may introduce more problems because
    the vintage software may be dependent upon features of the operating
    system that have been deprecated, replaced, or removed altogether.

    So no, you correct, there are no new images being generated for testing
    Trixie installations on i386 platforms. In most cases you probably
    should be using the AMD64 images, and probably could have been for a
    decade or more....


    I hope this answers your question,

    Best wishes
    /Andy

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