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.
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.
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.
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.
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.