I have a lot of old computers lying around. I’ve saved plenty of computers for family members, but 32-bit computers are soon no longer an option.
Windows 7 builds and Ubuntu have discontinued 32-bit support. If you need legacy support for old servers, you are going to have to look at something else. Debian, Antix and MX-Linux are the only thing that are going to support 32-bit as long as it is supported in the Linux kernel.
I wonder how much e-waste this decision is going to create at the dump by discontinuing software support. So sad.
We are reaching the top of Moore’s law. We are going to have to move into a 3D architecture pretty soon. Basically layering the transistors on the die. Xilinx is already making a stacked fpga with interconnects. Wild shit. Either way, my point is it will only get worse.
I just use them as shitty light-duty servers at this point for plex, my daughter’s minecraft, etc. - if the dependencies are still supported on some *nix systems wouldn’t a package update/upgrade keep things ship shape unless the dependencies dropped 32 bit enitirely?
I mean to be totally fair not a lot of people are command line nerds when there’s a perfectly good (yet limiting) GUI to use. I think the only reason I’m aware of this is that my cousin wouldn’t even let me know what the fuck an xwindows setup was until I fully learned how to do the dew with just a CLI. I mean shit even the package system is handled on GUI more often than not if I remember correctly nowadays
I feel like tails/kali will always have some sort of 32 bit support though as that’s straight up ‘burner laptop’ territory there
Those are essentially for the shitty welfare computers, i’d imagine they keep that viable since those are aimed at customers who generally wouldn’t be able to afford usual hardware
At my university we had an electron microscope, that only worked with software that ran on Windows NT. When that one computer running NT died we had one hell of a time getting it functional again.
I thought Debian only supported 32-bit. It’s cool Gentoo does too.
E-waste is a huge problem with heavy metals in our dumps. There was at least some incentive with gold and silver for us to send it to China to melt down and recover the metals. I guess it’s just a sign of the times that stuff is more expensive and we can’t get things like lumber and computer chips.
We need better recycling programs in this country, there’s no good reason not to looking forward. Unfortunately all that old equipment is a environmental problem one way or another. In a landfill, or running wasting power on a performance per watt basis.
Better to run old operating systems virtualized on modern power efficient equipment.
The 737 max that keeps crashing is run by two 16 bit computers. The software overloaded it and made the plane crash itself. So now it has, instead of a better computer, the same sh1tty one with a software update. The faa makes it nearly impossible to get new hardware on a plane, but they dont understand software enough to regulate it. No way in hell I am getting on a 737 max.
I am sure it was the in-cabin entertainment system not tied to anything critical with the plane running linux.
I used to sell dedicated coin-op juke boxes and arcade machines that you couldn’t tell they weren’t the original hardware. I had firewalls, e-mail servers media centers, you name it. My favorite was a laptop that just played DOOM and mods. That’s it. 32-bit hardware was great for IOT and dedicated appliances.
The 787 has a core network cabinet system on-board that includes multiple network modules that segregate and provide network interfaces among the sensitive avionics network, the passenger information and in-flight entertainment system, and the aircraft maintenance system used by engineers, crew, and airline employees.
Boeing’s 787 models come with various communications channels, including satellite devices and wireless connections for when the plane lands and connects to GateLink, an airline network that downloads information about the plane’s arrival; it’s also used by airlines or vendors to push firmware updates to the plane’s network components, for example. The planes also have a wired port for maintenance operations while parked at the airport.
An attacker could hack into the network via the Internet or another network link to the plane, such as its wireless terminal that connects the plane to the airline’s wireless network, Santamarta says.
It all comes back to a single firewall, running nasty versions of VxWorks.
The Boeing 787 core network security controls includes IP table-filtering in the Ethernet gateway module of the core network, where different rules determine which traffic goes from the open data network to the internal data network, for example. The aircraft also runs a firewall packet-filtering function based on a VxWorks library and employs system rules in the network interface module that help isolate the networks, Santamarta says.
Isolated to me means completely separate hardware physically separate. Sure the passenger entertainment system is ‘isolated’ by a vlan, or port, but what does that matter if it’s connected to the same vulnerable firewall as the avionics equipment?