But do you know about Solaris? If you read me regularly, you may have learned a thing or two in a previous article. Linux is not the only free operating system. So, whether it is to revive an old desktop computer, to keep a venerable server running or to design a brand new but constrained Internet of Things ( IoT) device, let’s see now which FOSS operating systems are still supporting the IA-32 architecture today. 32-bit Linux distributions and other open source OSes But merely considering the IA-32 architecture as a thing of the past would be ignoring another niche, well alive this one: embedded systems. Of course, we can question the merits of running a Pentium- or 80486-based computer in the 21st century.
Including that “old computer,” you had thrown away a few years ago. It’s unfortunate we forget sometimes it also means people running obsolete hardware.
HOW TO GET FORTNITE ON PC WITH 32 BIT OPERATING SYSTEM SOFTWARE
It was a premise of the open source movement to make software accessible to everyone everywhere. But, to quote a mail I received recently from Peter Tribble, author of Tribblix: “ in the developed world we assume that we can replace things in some parts of the developing world older IA-32 systems are still the norm, with 64-bit being rare.” If you have the opportunity to switch to 64 bits, do it. Not mentioning their price has considerably decreased in just a few years. Indeed, computers based on x86_64 hardware (x86-64) are superior in every way to their 32-bits counterpart: they are more powerful, run faster, are more compact, and more energy efficient. Or, to be accurate, they drop support for the Intel x86 32-bit architecture ( IA-32). One after the other, Linux distributions are dropping 32-bit support.