Hopefully i386 (or perhaps a new i386-like port with added support for 64-bit time values) can move to the unofficial Debian Ports infrastructure for Debian 14 (forky) or Debian 15 (duke). Debian Ports has a m68k port, so supporting one for i386 shouldn't be a huge problem.
To what end? Outside of sheer nostalgia if you are running ancient hardware, you probably have a bespoke application which requires that environment. Either you cannot change for hard technical, compliance, or just fear of the unknown. Firewall it from the internet and continue to run whatever release last worked.
I am not happy about unnecessary ewaste, but an i386 almost certainly has and order of magnitude less horsepower than a raspberry pi or N100.
Debian's tagline is the "universal operating system". It's a distribution with active ports on a very large number of architectures [1], even incredibly obscure ones.
The goal of universal compatibility that separates the Debian project from commercial software and even other open-source projects.
The legacy x86 architecture is still far more popular than some that platforms that Debian advertises as having official support for and there has been x86 based processors manufactured for niche applications until recently, eg, AMD Geode and others.
I find it really unfortunate Debian Project is removing official support for new x86 installations. The silver lining is it seems like they'll be an unofficial port and it's likely niche distributions like MX Linux and AntiX will maintain their own builds.
It would be ideal if open-source can develop stronger mechanims to keep support for the large numbers of these relatively niche architectures (eg, through increased usage of emulation over real hardware).
My Linux machine is very modern, but I still need i386 architecture support installed, because Steam requires 32-bit support. And Steam requires 32-bit support so people can play 15-year-old games.
(Admittedly, the 32-bit support Ubuntu ships is less than a full OS and you can't install Ubuntu on a 32-bit machine these days)
Debian is doing basically the same thing Ubuntu is with regards to i386. Packages are still being built for the architecture, but i386 systems aren't supported, and there's no 32-bit kernel package.
According to Passmark the Pentinum 4 1.3Ghz is 55 times slower than a Raspberry Pi 5, so I'd guess it's at least two orders of magnitude. The original Pi is 16 times faster than a P4 1.3Ghz...
You can recycle e-waste (and yes, I know SOME e-waste ends up in China/India/etc. Not all does.)
The e-waste is of substantially less concern than the massive difference in carbon footprint from power consumption.
The i386 architecture hasn't been dropped, it is still available in the archives to support 32-bit applications. The major change is that there no longer is a 32-bit kernel in the archive (the package linux-image-686 is no more). But most packages are still available in their i386 versions:
If the official i386 arch was built with instructions that your hardware doesn't support, tough cookies
While theoretically possible, that would only happen on processors older than 30 years. Debian's i386 architecture still uses -march=i686 as its baseline compiler target, which is the venerable Pentium Pro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P6_(microarchitecture)
Not sure why you are downvoted, I guess people don't believe this is true. To confirm: The AMD Geode LX was a <5W 32-bit x86 processor which did not support SSE instructions, and is therefore not fully i686 compatible. According to Wikipedia, it was produced until 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amd_geode#AMD_Geode
It was used in the OLPC XO-1. The Cisco ASA line of firewalls also used Geode processors at least at some point in its lifetime.
Much of that information has to do with creating a new hardware port from scratch. The i386 support just needs to be "demoted" to the Debian ports infrastructure once it's officially scheduled to get dropped from the main Debian repository (which could well happen starting either in Debian forky or duke), and this can probably be done with some special handling.
(Answering the "to what end?" question, a lot of 32bit-only hardware is still available and dirt cheap in the second-hand market (e.g. early "netbooks"), much of it quite well-built and enjoyable to use. While such hardware can no longer realistically browse the "modern" web, it can still find a lot of use for more lightweight tasks, including acting as a "thin client" for more powerful machines.)
Well, the existing i386 port is going to remain as-is for supporting old software (especially games) (but the CPU baseline will likely get increased), it isn't going to be removed, so you would need a new architecture for 32bit-only hardware.
Since i386 is not going to do the 2038 transition either (since that would break the ABI), also you would need to either make a new ABI for the new port, or do the 2038 transition for it too.
Over time more and more 32-bit bugs will get introduced, so there will be lots of maintenance work to do too.
I had seen conflicting information about this, though nothing official. I suppose we'll know more once some actual release planning happens for forky, which might take some time.
