Robert J. Sanderson wrote: > I am running on proven, reliable hardware (Pentium III architecture), but > I’ve discovered that the current Debian 13 environment seems to have > abandoned i386 as a first-class citizen. This is frankly baffling to me—why > would the "Universal Operating System" drop support for the architecture that > built the foundation of the internet?
Debian has never built on a VAX 11/750 or BBN IMPs. Nobody has i386 hardware to build Debian and nobody has the hardware to debug it. It starts with the Linux kernel dropping support for it. https://get.debian.org/images/archive/12.2.0/i386/ (oldstable) will continue to work, but get further and further behind in security updates. The FAQ: Users running i386 systems should not upgrade to trixie. Instead, Debian recommends either reinstalling them as amd64, where possible, or retiring the hardware. Cross-grading without a reinstall is a technically possible, but risky, alternative. > i386 Support: Since Debian 13 has effectively killed i386 support for native > installs, how am I expected to maintain my production uptime without being > forced to replace perfectly functional hardware with this "amd64" fad? Is > there a hidden repository or a stable backport I’m missing? No. 25 years was a good run. If there's something that you absolutely have to have that doesn't run on modern (2003+) hardware, you could run your whole i386 system in a virtual machine. You still shouldn't expose that to the Internet, though. > Systemd & Wayland: I am struggling to understand why we moved away from the > simplicity of sysvinit and XFree86. This new stack feels incredibly bloated > and non-transparent. Is there a supported "minimalist" path in the current > Stable release, or is it mandatory to embrace this complexity? Once the system is installed: # apt install sysvinit-core elogind That will re-install sysvinit as init, and elogind will do most of the things necessary to support X11 without systemd. Don't install GNOME, which is dependent on systemd. XFCE is good. FVWM and other standard window managers will work, too. > Legacy Migration: Does anyone have a guide on how to port 2.4-series kernel > configurations to the modern environment without breaking every single > dependency? That's too big a question. Try again with more specific ones. -dsr- -- https://randomstring.org/~dsr/eula.html is binding upon you.
