That's what I was thinking. Arch switched to all x86_64 a few months ago (announced the phase-out) but, Arch would probably be just as lightweight. I'm not sure what DE it comes with
None, the default install of Arch leaves you with a terminal prompt and basic utilities. You can install whatever you like from there. It's closer to something like the Debian minimal install than Ubuntu desktop.
It doesn't come with one either, it's for servers. You can install the ubuntu-desktop package (which is basically what you get off of the desktop install disk) afterwards, though. Not really clear if that will still be option on i386, that is do a net install and then install ubuntu-desktop. It sounds to me like they are just retiring the installer images for i386 and not the desktop related packages, so if you really need it then you can go this route. I bet it won't be well tested/supported though.
On a related note, Unity is getting the axe and 17.10 will ship GNOME as the default DE.
Neat! It seems the main drawback is that you only have 4GB of virtual memory. I wonder whether it would be possible to create some sort of hybrid that allows access to more memory. (himem? long-pointers? separating data/code/stack into different regions?)
If by that point you can't just throw another 512 of RAM at the problem, I'd be worried. 1GB is already starting to become the lowest rung for VPS providers. That's the $5 plan at Linode, anyway. I fully expect that to be universal (or greater) in four years time.
And that's not to mention that while a little wider, 64bit is also faster. This could be a saving factor under load.
I have Intel Atom netbooks that currently run Ubuntu wonderfully. But they are low RAM and the 32bit version runs better than the 64bit (if they can even run 64bit). I am worried I will have to drop Ubuntu and switch to plain Debian because of this.
Same. It's funny actually, last time I installed something on there I just assumed it was x86_64 and was thoroughly confused for a good few moments when the USB stick would not boot. But yeah, I, for one, still run Linux on i386 hardware. My netbook isn't obsolete. In fact, I don't think I can buy anything like it any more.
Oh don't be silly. The "produced" part is obviously only applied to consumable items. Something is not obsolete because it is no longer manufactured. It might be obsolete if consumable parts for it are no longer manufactured. Nobody would use obsolete to refer to a tool that still performs its intended function but is no longer manufactured.
There's a crop of light, cheap Chinese laptops based on Atoms (well, they call them "Apollo Lake") which are the closes you can get to a modern day netbook. Google N3450 (the most popular CPU), or brands like Chuwi, Jumper or Onda.
Largely for the shadowbanned reply to this: For Linux tinkerers, there are tons of cheap Chromebooks with Apollo Lake that can be reflashed and/or put in dev mode and happily run regular Linux.
Do you plan on keeping those Atom machines for longer than 2021? Because otherwise it should not be an issue, as you can still use 16.04 with the latest patches until 2021.
I still use my old second-hand Samsung N220 Plus occasionally when I'm travelling, as it's lighter than my main laptop and I can't afford a light + performant one.
I'd never actually considered whether to run 32-bit or 64-bit OS on it, and just installed the 64-bit by habit.
Hop on the final i686 LTS-type release of either Ubuntu or CentOS, and you'll be fine for a long time. RHEL4 was updated for like a decade after it first launched.
Fedora nearly dropped i686 earlier this year, and might do so soon. More specifically there was a proposal to stop building i686 kernels[1] which didn't go through but it did start a lot of discussion on the mailing list. Eventually it was decided to set up an x86 SIG for anyone interested in maintaining it[2][3]. It's yet to be seen how the SIG will work out.
This is really only tangentially-related, but on the subject of removing architecture support, can I point out how annoying it is that Eclipse 4 does not target ARM architectures?
It's more that any consumer grade processor seems to have this limitation.
I have an i7-6700HQ for example, and I can either have Hyper-V turned on (I'm on Windows) in which case I can only run 32-bit VM's with VirtualBox, or I can turn off Hyper-V in which case I can run one 64-bit VM on VirtualBox, and then only 32-bit VM's past that.
If I'm doing Android development, I can't run a 64-bit VM at the same time as the Android emulator is 64-bit.
Sometimes I want to run my web server, an Android VM, and maybe a Redis server on Ubuntu in a VM. I can't emulate Android and run a 64-bit VM, so the 32-bit Ubuntu distro is invaluable here.
I got an SSD on Friday and accidentally downloaded the 32-bit desktop ISO for 16.04 ... even with PAE on 8GB RAM with 8GB swap, it turns out 32-bit Firefox crashes when its virtual memory footprint gets too big ...
So yeah. 32-bit is now a specialist thing. Or you could use Debian.
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] threadNone, the default install of Arch leaves you with a terminal prompt and basic utilities. You can install whatever you like from there. It's closer to something like the Debian minimal install than Ubuntu desktop.
On a related note, Unity is getting the axe and 17.10 will ship GNOME as the default DE.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/X32_ABI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15366955
You could use Debian x32 instead. 32 bit pointers but amd64 instruction set: https://wiki.debian.org/X32Port
If by that point you can't just throw another 512 of RAM at the problem, I'd be worried. 1GB is already starting to become the lowest rung for VPS providers. That's the $5 plan at Linode, anyway. I fully expect that to be universal (or greater) in four years time.
And that's not to mention that while a little wider, 64bit is also faster. This could be a saving factor under load.
That's pretty much the definition of obsolete
Your definition of obsolete, while correct, is not complete.
Also a great place for DIY project supplies. They sell a lot of electronics parts, CNC bits (not sure about the quality), quadrocoptor parts, etc.
I still use my old second-hand Samsung N220 Plus occasionally when I'm travelling, as it's lighter than my main laptop and I can't afford a light + performant one.
I'd never actually considered whether to run 32-bit or 64-bit OS on it, and just installed the 64-bit by habit.
[1] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/Stop_Building_i686_Ke...
[2] https://pagure.io/fesco/issue/1737
[3] https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/x86
Look at this: http://archive.eclipse.org/eclipse/downloads/drops4/R-4.6-20...
Linux (x86/GTK+) Linux (x86_64/GTK+) Linux (PPC/GTK+) Linux (PPC64/GTK+) Linux (s390x/GTK+) Linux (s390/GTK+) Linux (PPC64LE/GTK+)
And yet no ARM...I'll bet more people use that than s390.
SWT is Java, and has a platform-independent API, but has platform-specific implementations. (SWT JARs are unique per OS/architecture)
Oh, god. What a monstrosity of a build system. And the documentation (or lack thereof)...here there be tygers.
On most processors you can only run one 64 bit VM, but as many 32 bit VMs as you can handle.
I have an i7-6700HQ for example, and I can either have Hyper-V turned on (I'm on Windows) in which case I can only run 32-bit VM's with VirtualBox, or I can turn off Hyper-V in which case I can run one 64-bit VM on VirtualBox, and then only 32-bit VM's past that.
If I'm doing Android development, I can't run a 64-bit VM at the same time as the Android emulator is 64-bit.
Sometimes I want to run my web server, an Android VM, and maybe a Redis server on Ubuntu in a VM. I can't emulate Android and run a 64-bit VM, so the 32-bit Ubuntu distro is invaluable here.
Tl;dr opensource or not, market share dictates supported archs.
The only difference been, you can try to build from the sources for your vintage hardware.
So yeah. 32-bit is now a specialist thing. Or you could use Debian.
16.04 is supported until 2021, so ...