POWER UP YOUR OLD PCS
Jonni Bidwell explores the open-source options for 32-bit users
buntu 20.04, the longawaited Long Term Support (LTS) edition of one of the world’s most popular distros, is coming, and you can’t install it on a 32-bit PC. Neither can you upgrade 32-bit Ubuntu 18.04 to this edition. And all those distros that get rebased off the new LTS? You can’t run those either.
So does this mean the end of 32-bit Linux? Not at all. Are we then guilty of misleading headlines? Maybe a little bit.
For one thing, there are lots of 32-bit platforms that aren’t going away – Ubuntu is only dropping support for the 32-bit x86 architecture – 32-bit ARM devices (including Raspberry Pis) for example are still supported.
Debian (and plenty of other distributions) will continue to support
U32-bit x86 machines until at least 2024. The previous Ubuntu release (and its derivatives, such as Mint 19) will be supported until 2023, so there’s no need to panic just yet. Most importantly, nothing is going to happen to 32-bit support in the kernel any time soon.
That being said, such hardware isn’t really suited to running modern applications. A single CPU core and a hard 4GB memory limit do not make for a pleasant Firefox experience, no matter how lightweight you make the underlying desktop. But there are other ways to browse the web, and there are other use cases beyond the desktop where modest hardware can still be useful.
So if you are running 32-bit machinery, or contemplating resurrecting your old dusty tower, we’ll give you some helpful ideas. We’ll go in depth with the Linux Mint Debian Edition, which is the natural place for Mint users (and anyone else seeking a user-friendly, reliable distro) to seek refuge. And we’ll talk about some even more lightweight offerings that are out there. We’ll also look at how Linux does support old hardware for as long as it’s reasonable to do so, and we’ll take a look at where 32-bit code is still required.
32-BIT KEEPS ON GOING “There’s no need to panic just yet. Most importantly, nothing is going to happen to 32-bit support in the kernel any time soon.”