There are and will always be distros optimized for running on everything. Fedora is a “move fast” distro, it’s hard to move fast with a lot of baggage.
To be a little more precise, Linux is still available for 32-bit x86, just not from the Fedora distro. The Linux project is just now dropping support for 486 CPUs, because the maintenance burden for a virtually unused system type is too high for the mainline. That still leaves 32-bit Pentiums and newer though.
I think the last time I had a 32 bit CPU was around 2005 but I could be remembering that incorrectly. Supporting 20 year old hardware isn’t always easy.
It isn’t easy, but this isn’t about the hardware. It’s about the software packages. Tons of software meant to run on 32-bit hasn’t been updated to run on 64-bit natively. Thus the burden of keeping a lot of packages that serve as backwards compatibility.
Tons of software meant to run on 32-bit hasn’t been updated to run on 64-bit natively.
32bit only Linux apps are basically non-existent, anything with the source available and maintainers would have been ported at some point in the last 2 decades, otherwise they have very specific technical reasons for being 32bit only (like OBS iiuc), the source has been lost somehow, or it’s a proprietary program where the company has no interest (e.g. Valve with Steam)
Is dropping support for 32bit hardware more important than being able to run on everything?
Because it has always seemed like one of Linux’s core strengths is that no matter what your hardware is, you can run Linux on it.
There are and will always be distros optimized for running on everything. Fedora is a “move fast” distro, it’s hard to move fast with a lot of baggage.
Run fast is fine, until it’s run away fast…
Yes evidently, because they dropped that hardware support in 2019. Specifically they dropped 32-bit x86 kernels in Fedora 31
To be a little more precise, Linux is still available for 32-bit x86, just not from the Fedora distro. The Linux project is just now dropping support for 486 CPUs, because the maintenance burden for a virtually unused system type is too high for the mainline. That still leaves 32-bit Pentiums and newer though.
Fedora is usually the first to pioneer something
I think the last time I had a 32 bit CPU was around 2005 but I could be remembering that incorrectly. Supporting 20 year old hardware isn’t always easy.
It isn’t easy, but this isn’t about the hardware. It’s about the software packages. Tons of software meant to run on 32-bit hasn’t been updated to run on 64-bit natively. Thus the burden of keeping a lot of packages that serve as backwards compatibility.
32bit only Linux apps are basically non-existent, anything with the source available and maintainers would have been ported at some point in the last 2 decades, otherwise they have very specific technical reasons for being 32bit only (like OBS iiuc), the source has been lost somehow, or it’s a proprietary program where the company has no interest (e.g. Valve with Steam)
In fact I think Steam might really be it.