14 DAY TRIAL // Earlier this month, the Kubuntu developers have confirmed to us that they won't support new 32-bit installations with the upcoming Kubuntu 18.10 release, and now they made it official.
Developer Valorie Zimmerman posted a message on the Kubuntu-devel mailing list a couple of days ago to officially announce that Kubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) is the last Kubuntu release to offer 32-bit ISO images, as starting with Kubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) they won't be supporting new 32-bit installations.
As already widely reported, the removal of the 32-bit install media revolution has begun amongst official Ubuntu flavors. The first to take the big step was Ubuntu MATE, followed closely by Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu Studio, and Ubuntu Kylin. After an official proposal from developer Bryan Quigley, Xubuntu and Kubuntu followed too.
Therefore, those who still want to install any of these official Ubuntu flavors on their 32-bit computers would have to rely only on the current LTS release, Ubuntu 18.04 (Bionic Beaver), which will be supported for three years with regular point releases, until April 2021. The first such point release is 18.04.1, expected in July 2018.
ARM support takes the stage
As the world is moving away from the 32-bit ecosystem, so are Linux developers. Ubuntu already dropped support for 32-bit installations for Ubuntu Desktop last year, and this year Ubuntu Server followed suit. 32-bit (i386) packages in the Ubuntu archive are still there for existing users, but the focus from here on will be on 64-bit and ARM.
"For now, the i386 *packages* in the archive are not going away. However, I think the clock is ticking for them as well," said Valorie Zimmerman on behalf of the Kubuntu Team. "On the other hand, this will mean more attention from developers on the newer ARM stuff which will be useful for those with Raspi or little ARM laptop/netbooks."
With that in mind, Kubuntu 18.10 (Cosmic Cuttlefish) will be a 64-bit release only, and you should expect better support for ARM hardware. So if you're still using an old 32-bit computer, you might want to install Kubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) now and consider upgrading to an ARM laptop in the near future.