Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS Dropping 32-Bit/i386 Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Ubuntu Server 18.04 LTS Dropping 32-Bit/i386 Support

With Ubuntu 17.10 the 32-bit desktop image/installer was dropped while for the upcoming Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release they plan to do away with the ubuntu-server i386 release...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Ubuntu-Server-18.04-32-bit

[starshipeleven]

inb4 "THE END IS NIGH!!!" type of posts.

[VikingGe]

inb4 "THE END IS NIGH!!!" type of posts.

don't forget to mention the people who don't know the difference between multilib and a pure 32-bit distro.

[rene]

it is probably not real i386 anyway, that is gone in glibc since NPTL for a looong time and linux kernel since 3.8 or something.
Minimum compilable upstream since - uh - a decade? is i486.

[eydee]

Owners of the billions of Pentium 4 and Atom servers sunning in the world must be crying now. What a loss!

[anarki2]

Good riddance. Focus efforts on fixing the 64 bit parts.

[Dedale]

386 support was dropped in 2013 if my memory serves me well. Minimum CPU would be a 486. Xubuntu 14.04 was sluggish on my 32 bits netbook. Debian strech works but slowly. Crunchbang was perfect but was discontinued. Lubuntu was buggy. I like this old netbook.

I will have to find small sized distros with a modern enough version of octave.

[ThanosApostolou]

I do have an old 32bit machine with Ubuntu 16.04 which I use for some servers like shared files with samba, shared printer with cups (my printer is old and doesn't have network capabilities), remote torrent with deluge daemon, shared media with minidlna, xampp/apache for testing/educational purposes, etc... I do plan to do a clean install with 18.04 when it's out, since I've messed with many services and system files so I want to start with a clean slate. However, I was planning to use the mini ISO instead of the server one anyway, since I want the OS to be as minimal as possible on this ancient machine. So, I'm ok with that decision (next OS after that will be something like Debian 11 if this machine is still alive).

[rene]

386 support was dropped in 2013 if my memory serves me well. Minimum CPU would be a 486. Xubuntu 14.04 was sluggish on my 32 bits netbook. Debian strech works but slowly. Crunchbang was perfect but was discontinued. Lubuntu was buggy. I like this old netbook.

I will have to find small sized distros with a modern enough version of octave.

I still test and use #t2sde on my Nokia Booklet 3G, and vintage Transmeta silicon for the fun ;-) https://t2sde.org/hardware/workstation/HP/t5000/ https://t2sde.org/hardware/portable/OQO/01+/

[Adarion]

386 support was dropped in 2013 if my memory serves me well. Minimum CPU would be a 486. Xubuntu 14.04 was sluggish on my 32 bits netbook. Debian strech works but slowly. Crunchbang was perfect but was discontinued. Lubuntu was buggy. I like this old netbook.

I will have to find small sized distros with a modern enough version of octave.

Gentoo. If you don't mind possible chroot compiling (or even native compiling). sci-mathematics/octave is on v. 4.2.1

I tested Gentoo to be working on an P100 S (no MMX, no SSE, just pure old x86). Of course, some SW might be better off if you happen to have some additional instruction sets, e.g. some multimedia SW benefits from things like MMX, 3dnow, SSEx and the likes. I recently compiled a FF without SSE2 on the CPU and til now it still seems to work.

The second version of the mentioned Transmeta (1st Cursoe 2nd Efficeon?) has SSE2 implemented iirc..


Gentoo still is fun on older machines as long as they are x86 and you can thus easily chroot-compile on a bigger amd64 box.