32 bit Intel/AMD will likely disappear from the kernel if it becomes too hard to support. I've just had a quick look at the Fit-PC site - all of them look to be 64 bit capable. You want something low power - 64 bit ARM? There does come a point when 32 bit x86 really isn't viable - that's round about now in my humble estimation, if it wasn't actually two years ago. Crucially, the boost library is hard to build - Firefox is built on 64 bit to work on 32 bit - and those are the obvious ones. If you want the distributions to spend time building on 64 bit for you to run on 32 bit hardware which is significantly old you do need to show a demonstrable need and perhaps find sponsors for a toolchain and permanent build at this point.
Charles Curley wrote:
> I hope so. All I need is console capabilities, security software
> (firewall, etc.) and server software. I don't need an office suite or web
> browser for those machines.
Same here. So it means we have 2-4years to get ready.
I guess one needs a bit more in order to compile the code ... you need at
least the compiler and companions. I now compile only the kernel in chroot
as it was pointed out because debian moved away from pure 586 and also
there is a kind of magic combination of features for the Geode board I use,
so that the stock kernel never worked past 2.13.
So the question is (as we are already on the topic) when debian drops the
support, what would be required to build the code.
Are compilers going to stop supporting 386 arch?
Is it going to disappear from the kernel completely?
Is it going to get fixes and how?