Ubuntu 16.04 Might Be The Distribution's Last 32-Bit Release

Written by Michael Larabel in Ubuntu on 21 October 2014 at 09:19 AM EDT. 72 Comments
UBUNTU
Ubuntu contributor Bryan Quigley is considering a proposal to make Ubuntu 16.04 LTS the last release of Ubuntu with 32-bit installation images.

Come April 2016, Intel 32-bit users might be on their last, overdue leg for upgrading their distribution. Quigley is considering a proposal to kill off the 32-bit install (ISO) images after that point while support for 32-bit applications on 64-bit Ubuntu would still be supported. The proposal would only involve Intel/AMD x86 with 32-bit ARM being unaffected given that 32-bit ARM is still very common to devices.

For help building this proposal, Bryan Quigley is requesting people take a short survey that can be found via this web page as he tries to get a better idea for Ubuntu user habits and what kind of hardware they're running.


If your hardware is x86_64, you should definitely be running 64-bit Ubuntu! The performance is much better and there's really no reason to be sticking to 32-bit Ubuntu given that all of the incompatibility issues of the past have been pretty much resolved. With ending the 32-bit Ubuntu installer releases after 16.04 LTS, that would still give devout 32-bit users until 2021 (five years of LTS updates) to let their hardware gracefully kick the bucket.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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