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A Moment Of Silence, Please, For The Final Release Of Debian On X86-32
EDITORS: THIS HAS BEEN PRODUCED BY SOFTWARE UNDER DEVELOPMENT - THE CONTENT MAY REQUIRE EXTENSIVE EDITING
https://www.theregister.com/os-platforms/2026/07/15/a-moment-of-silence-please-for-the-final-release-of-debian-on-x86-32/5271198 [theregister.com]
This week brings two point releases for both Debian 13 - aka “Trixie” - and Debian 12 - “Bookworm,” the latter now shuffling off into long-term support.
Debian 13.6 [debian.org] and Debian 12.15 [debian.org] are just the latest point releases of Trixie and Bookworm, but Debian 12.15 is also significant in another way: it marks the end of regular support for Debian 12, which is being handed over to the LTS team [debian.org]. That reduced level [debian.org] of support is scheduled to last until mid-2028 [debian.org].
That means Debian 12.15 is the last point release of Debian 12. There won’t be a Debian 12.16. In turn, that means mainstream support for Debian on 32-bit x86 is over. (Debian 13 does still support some 32-bit Arm CPUs via the armhf port [debian.org].)
As we warned you in 2023 [theregister.com], to run Debian 13 on x86, you require a 64-bit CPU. It supports 32-bit packages and libraries, so you can run 32-bit programs fine – but if you want to install Trixie on a 32-bit CPU, then you need to compile your own kernel. That’s not impossible: as we reported in late 2025 [theregister.com], WindowMaker Live 13.2 does this, and so does antiX Linux, which we last looked at in March [theregister.com].
The new releases both have two significant changes worth knowing about.
The fwupd firmware-update tool from the Linux Vendor Firmware Service [fwupd.org] has been updated to version 2.0.20 [github.com]. As the Arch wiki describes [archlinux.org], fwupd can only update the system firmware if your machine boots in UEFI mode (that is, not legacy BIOS boot.) However, that’s useful, as it can update UEFI machines’ secure-boot signing certificates and database too – and as Red Hat warned [redhat.com] last month, Microsoft’s original 2011 secure-boot certificates just expired.
If you don’t use secure boot, that doesn’t matter, but if you do and your boxes haven’t rebooted in a while, you might have problems. Don’t panic: problems aren’t likely, but if you do have some, disabling secure boot will work around it. Either way, it’s worth updating those certificates. The Debian Wiki has more info [debian.org], and Linux Weekly News has a full rundown on the problem [lwn.net].
Also, there’s a downgrade: the geoip-database [debian.org] package has been rolled back to an older version from 2019. This is because of changes in the MaxMind EULA [maxmind.com] on newer versions of GeoLite [maxmind.com] which conflict with the Debian Free Software Guidelines [debian.org].
The Debian release notes, somewhat unexpectedly, tell users to go and buy it:
“Consumers of this data are strongly encouraged to obtain a GeoLite [maxmind.com] license directly and cease reliance on the ‘geoip-database’ package.”
