The Future Of 32-bit Support

Authors Jason Self

Plaintext

jxself.org

The Future Of 32-bit Support Home

Tue, 7 Sep 2021 Linux-libre
I've received some questions about the future of my 32-bit x86 kernel builds so I
thought I'd answer by putting out something public. GitWeb

The questions seems to stem from some GNU/Linux distros dropping support for How To
these machines, citing a lack of popularity.
Articles
Popularity is not the deepest way to consider this issue though: It's important to
consider what's good for our software freedom.
RSS Feed
Looking at this through the lens of software freedom, there are some 32-bit x86
machines supported by libreboot. Those machines are out of production and will About Me
become harder and harder to find over time which, as I talked about in Evacuating
The Titanic, is a big problem for our own sustainability. Contact Me
As I talked about in that other article I continue to support exploring other options as
GPL enforced
well and that was my motivation for adding more architectures to my Linux-libre APT
repository.
If you appreciate any of the things I
At the same time it doesn't make sense to drop support for some of our most well-
am doing you can make a donation.
supported hardware (well-supported from a software freedom point of view) just
because it's old. That hardware will continue to function just fine for many years to
come and, if we want people to use those systems for the sake of their freedom, then
they need to be supported.

There's no way to know what's going to work out well for software freedom in the long
term. It doesn't make sense to put all of our eggs in one basket. Indeed, there can be
multiple efforts going on at the same time and, as one of those efforts, I have no plans
to stop making 32-bit x86 kernel builds so as to continue supporting what we already
have.