It will take many years until devs drop 32-bit support

Nov 16, 2014 16:55 GMT  ·  By

Ubuntu developers have talked about continuing the support for the 32-bit images and apps, but no real progress has been made in this regard. For now it's not really an issue, but Canonical has to plan ahead.

Numerous Linux distributions have stopped providing 32-bit images for their users, but most of those OSes don't have large user bases. It's easy to say that you don't support 32-bit apps and that you won't build 32-bit images when there are not too many users for your operating system, but things change when that distro is Ubuntu.

It might seem like a trivial decision to make for the Ubuntu devs, especially if we take into consideration that the number of users that actually download and install that particular architecture has been dropping in the last few years. Now, less than 20% of users download and install 32-bit Ubuntu images and that number is decreasing with each release, but there are a couple of issues to take into consideration.

64-bit-only Ubuntu images are not happening anytime soon

The main reason the developers are considering dropping the support for the 32-bit architecture is that it keeps a large part of the team busy. Those resources could be redirected towards other aspects of the distro, but for now, Canonical will have to keep those images alive.

On the other hand, it's likely that 32-bit images will be dropped after the launch Ubuntu 16.04 LTS. The support for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS 32-bit will end in 2019, so at least until then the devs will have to support this architecture.

In any case, the support for 32-bit images is an entirely different thing from support for 32-bit apps. From what has been discussed until now, it looks like the Ubuntu devs don't have a clear image on what will happen in the ecosystem, so it's difficult to make a decision either way.

It wasn't until Ubuntu 13.10 that Canonical even recommended the 64-bit edition over the 32-bit one. There are also a number of other considerations to be taken into account. There are also many users who have older processors and use flavors like Xubuntu and Lubuntu, which have really low system requirements. All those users might not be able to run 64-bit-only systems.

These discussions about the opportunity of dropping 32-bit support for Ubuntu took place during the Ubuntu Online Summit that just ended.

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