MX Linux Forum

It has been posted in the MX News blog post for October 26th that "Change logs indicate that Debian will not be building 32 bit x86 kernels in Debian 13 and onward."

Doing a quick search on this, this does not appear to be correct, or at least, conflicts with the official Debian 13 documentation. (https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/ ... s-now-i686) Instead, the official documentation basically states that the CPU instruction requirements for 32-bit Debian 13 will rise to the i686 level instead of the i586 level it was at before.

There's no conflict with the docs you link. Debian will have 32bit packages built for i686+ processors, but those docs don't mention kernels.

Also, Debian has stopped building kernels for 32bit x86 upstream, starting with 6.11 kernels. It's already happening.

timkb4cq wrote: Thu Oct 31, 2024 10:32 pm There's no conflict with the docs you link. Debian will have 32bit packages built for i686+ processors, but those docs don't mention kernels.

This just cannot be... It seems like a massive move made out of nowhere and a nonsensical one at that. Checking the news at debian.org/News/ doesn't seem to mention it either. Why would they still build 32-bit packages but not a 32-bit kernel? It's still listed as a supported architecture as well in said Debian 13 documentation. And if they were going to start dropping CPU support lines, why would they do it for x86 instead of, say, little-endian MIPS? Either the information in the changelog must be mistaken/miscommunicated, or a big mistake by the Debian maintainers is in the process of getting made.

With the issues that Intel is facing and the alleged offer by Qualcomm to Intel we might see the end of x86_64 and x86_32 lineup itself. As it is Intel chips cannot compete with ARM based chips either on efficiency or in power draw.

About the move to remove legacy support from Debian 13 that has been in works for a long time.

LinuxSpring1 wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2024 2:39 am With the issues that Intel is facing and the alleged offer by Qualcomm to Intel we might see the end of x86_64 and x86_32 lineup itself. As it is Intel chips cannot compete with ARM based chips either on efficiency or in power draw.

About the move to remove legacy support from Debian 13 that has been in works for a long time.

It should be soon that ARM laptops/desktop and even servers start becoming more mainstream and that's only if there's a common ARM chip/chipset design rather than having so many different flavors of ARM chips. It may well be Qualcomm becoming the Intel of the ARM world if it settles on and then offers a standard ARM CPU architecture. It is hoped that ARM can become a low cost and powerful successor to x86 chips.

We have some concepts of a plan about using a 32-bit antiX kernel for MX 25, but it's still under discussion, and may not materialize.

Stevo wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2024 12:58 pm We have some concepts of a plan about using a 32-bit antiX kernel for MX 25, but it's still under discussion, and may not materialize.

Even if that were not the case nobody said that Kernel source will no longer compile on 32bit systems so as long as there will be 32bit legacy Packaging then if any organization is interested in maintaining a 32bit Distro (although "why?" is becoming a more dominant question) it will fall upon the Distro Maintainers to build their own kernels. Debian not doing it isn't the end of the road at all..

The current trixie kernel is 6.11.4. If you look through all the architectures debian has built it for at this link you'll see i386 is missing.
https://packages.debian.org/search?keyw ... age-6.11.4

Stevo wrote: Fri Nov 01, 2024 12:58 pm We have some concepts of a plan...

I see what you did there