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Ubuntu seems to be poising itself to letting 32-bitters alone in the dark:https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2016-June/039420.html
in 2018, the question will come if we can effectively provide security support on i386.
cross-grading between i386->amd64 is not something we can reliably ship. We must continue [to] provide the i386 port, to support multiarch and 3rd party legacy application that are only available as i386 binaries.
Building i386 images is not "for free", it comes at the cost of utilizing our build farm, QA and validation time. Whilst we have scalable build-farms, i386 still requires all packages, autopackage tests, and ISOs to be revalidated across our infrastructure. As well as take up mirror space & bandwidth.
Thus the question is what can we and what should we do to limit i386 installations before they become unsupportable?
In essence this would mean April 2021 as the sunset for i386 as the host/base OS architecture. And April 2023 to run legacy i386applications with security support.
I do use, from time to time, a (then, in 2009) top-of-the-notch 3.4GHz P-IV, for the little gaming I do and for printing. But I did notice even it is easily overwhelmed by many javascript-laden sites. How many soylentils are going to fight tooth and nails to keep their 32 pc's up and running beyond 2018, are 32 bit platforms of any relevance today aside as for IoT or CNC processes?
(Score: 2) by julian on Thursday July 07 2016, @01:32AM
tossing out working gear and buying new with the advantage for me of ... nothing, absolutely nothing at all
Well, that depends what you want. I have been using pfSense for a few years now (after a brief period using Smoothwall Linux). I started out with a full-sized Dell Optiplex 330 [dell.com] (Pentium Dual Core 1.6Ghz, 2GB RAM, 2x80GB HDD in RAID1, extra Intel NIC). It worked. It only had to reboot for updates, the longest stretch being about 6 months. It still worked when I replaced it. Dell seriously made those things to last. They could be out in the world secreted away in closets and offices dutifully running network services for decades.
I bought a tiny fanless computer smaller than three standard DVD movie cases that is just as reliable (probably theoretically more reliable since there are no moving parts). It mounts on the wall next to my modem and I bought a nice little table that hides the whole thing.
The advantage? I no longer have that ugly Dell box whirring away in my office and using way more electricity than is necessary for the job :^)