Fedora To Stop Providing i686 Kernels, Might Also Drop 32-Bit Modular/Everything Repos

The proposed change to no longer build i686 Linux kernel packages beginning with the Fedora 31 release later this year has been approved. Additionally, they might also begin removing some 32-bit repositories.

The F31 change proposal to stop building 32-bit x86 (i686) kernels was approved at Friday's Fedora Engineering and Steering Committee (FESCo) meeting. So that's the end of the road for 32-bit x86 kernels on Fedora and any installation media.

But also brought up in this discussion was when to end 32-bit software repositories for Fedora. FESCo debated it and said they would consider a late change proposal for the repository dropping to still happen for Fedora 31. As a result, the No i686 Repositories proposal was drafted this weekend. Under this secondary proposal, Fedora 31 would stop producing and distributing Modular and Everything i686 repositories. This also makes it impossible for existing Fedora x86 32-bit users from upgrading to Fedora 31 while sticking to an older kernel release. That late change will be discussed at the next FESCo meeting.

So if you are still using 32-bit x86 Fedora, your days could very well be numbered but at least for now the multi-lib support is expected to be maintained in order to support 32-bit programs on x86_64. At the FESCo meeting this week they also approved the "Python means Python 3" change proposal for ensuring python points to the latest Python 3.