Linux kernel will soon drop ~~i386~~ (32-bit) support (web.archive.org)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by activistPnk@slrpnk.net to c/permacomputing

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The article title is “Debian Likely Moving Away From i386 In The Near Future” but according to the article Debian will drop i386 support because it will be dropped from the kernel. Seems like bad news for permacomputing folks.

(EDIT) modified the title since it seems more accurate to say that 32-bit support is being dropped. (reference)

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[-] purplemonkeymad@programming.dev 3 points 11 months ago

No, that is not what it means. i386 is specifically the set of instructions that the 386 introduced. Later processors from intel added additional instructions, those were rolled into i686 as a set. i686 contains i386 so it can still run programs that target that, but a 386 can't run a i686 program.

i386 and i686 are both x86 32 bit instruction sets.

What is happening is that the kernel will no longer support i386 as a target. So any processor that does not support at least i686 will stop working. This is basically anything before around a pentium 3 (iirc might be wrong about exact CPU.) Vista era computers should not be effected.

The confusing part is that some distros have already dropped all 32bit for other reasons, but it would mean it would be hard for distros going forward to support 386 era processors.

[-] GenderNeutralBro 2 points 11 months ago

The Linux kernel dropped i386 support back in 2012: https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTI0OTg

I think any reference to i386 nowadays really refers to i686. Debian, for example, officially dropped support even for i586 with Stretch back in 2017: https://web.archive.org/web/20170701011018/https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch/i386/release-notes/ch-information.en.html

So I think the linked article really does mean that they are dropping all 32-bit x86 support.

this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023

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