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Comment by geofft | Hacker News Reader

Relatedly, Ubuntu no longer builds for i386 as a complete architecture: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2019...

They are still building i386 packages for use on 64-bit kernels, for the sake of precompiled 32-bit software (games etc). That's scenario B from Simon McVittie's reply in this thread, and it sounds like that's not affected.

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I was able to upgrade from Lubuntu 16.04 to 18.04 for my 32bit IBM Thinkpad T42 using do_release_upgrade. It’s not downloadable on the website, but I think for 18.04 the build is still there.

You can download Ubuntu going back to 4.10 here: http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/

Not sure how well that would work for installing things that aren't in the release ISOs...

I think they've stopped building them in 19.10. 18.04 is an LTS supported for 5 years, so users of i386-only CPUs are fine until 2023.

I have a load of 32bit laptops, "I'll put ChromiumOS on them", nope, that's not a thing any more. OK, err Linux? Apparently not. Could put Windows 10 on them I guess.

You could try Debian, which is essentially Ubuntu minus some themes. I doubt Debian will drop i386 support soon (I just searched and couldn't find hints of an end of support of i386)

But then you'll have all these kernel bugs.

What do you mean?

Ubuntu is a Linux, but Linux is not only Ubuntu. I have loads of x86 boxes - Debian, Puppy Linux, whatever. (Win10 has a 32-bit option? Whoa. #TIL)

Lubuntu 18.04 (and most other Ubuntu derivatives like Xubuntu etc.) is only supported for 3 years.

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