On Wed, Aug 13 2025, Aryan Karamtoth wrote: > i386 has been phased out a long time ago by many software projects as well as > operating systems. Even in Debian, it was still on life support and now that > life support is gone.
Without getting into a debate over whether i386 should or should not be dropped, as someone that runs other 32-bit archs, I wonder why armhf and armel weren't similarly targeted? This isn't a disagreement, but an honest question. I don't know that most of the software Debian includes would be highly opinionated about particular 32-bit archs. I suppose if compilers were actively dropping support for i386, that would make a difference. (I guess then I'd still have to wonder why they are dropping i386 but not armhf) I note that armel will also be dropped for forky, leaving armhf as our only remaining 32-bit released arch. (And forcing me to replace my Raspberry Pi B+ boards that are still happily running snapclient around my house) I don't have statistics at hand, so I can only speculate: I know that armhf has been wildly popular due to Raspberry Pis, and traditionally Raspberry Pi OS used it even for their 64-bit capable models. In Debian though, it is only required on the series 2 models (the 0/1 can't run armhf and has to run armel which is very slow, and 3 and above can run arm64, though most don't on the 3s). On the other hand, i386 has been absolutely everywhere for many many years (roughly 1985 to 2009, when Windows defaulted to 64-bit). The older (generally pre-4) Pis have some favorable characteristics, particularly around power and cooling. They can often be powered by cell phone chargers and have little need for active cooling. - John
