The 32-bit ISO image and repositories will be removed

Nov 18, 2017 11:18 GMT  ·  By

Following on the footsteps of Arch Linux, the developers of the BlackArch ethical hacking and penetration testing GNU/Linux distribution announced today that they're dropping 32-bit support.

The announcement was published this morning on their website and Twitter account, as it looks like the BlackArch developers plan to remove the 32-bit ISO images and respective repositories soon, urging all those running BlackArch on 32-bit PCs to upgrade to the 64-bit version of the operating system as soon as possible.

"Following 9 months of deprecation period, support for the i686 architecture effectively ends today. By the end of November, i686 packages will be removed from our mirrors and later from the packages archive," said the devs. "We wish to thank all of BlackArch's users, mirrors, and supporters. Thanks for your help."

BlackArch Linux now only a 64-bit OS

Beginning November 30, 2017, the BlackArch Linux operating system will be available only for 64-bit machines. The 32-bit ISO images have been already removed from the official website, and if you're still using a 32-bit BlackArch system you won't be able to update your apps to newer versions, nor patch security issues.

We recommend all those using BlackArch on a 32-bit machine to try and upgrade to a 64-bit processor. On the other hand, if you're running the 32-bit BlackArch system on a 64-bit computer make sure you upgrade the installation to the 64-bit architecture, which is usually done through a fresh install of the OS.

BlackArch Linux is one the most popular ethical hacking and penetration testing GNU/Linux distributions, featuring more than 1,900 hacking tools and over 2,500 packages in the software repository as of October 2017. More packages are added all the time with new ISO snapshots, the latest being BlackArch Linux 2017.08.30.