Mozilla is FINALLY pulling the plug on 32-bit Firefox builds for Linux, a decade after Google Chrome did the same. Why now? It says they're getting hard to build.
Debian Trixie just released, and they dropped support for 32-bit x86. You can still run 32-bit software, but the OS must be running on amd64 (aka x86_64). Given the amount of distros which are Debian derivatives, there’s probably not going to be a whole lot of systems around to run 32-bit Firefox on anyway.
The i386 architecture is now only intended to be used on a 64-bit (amd64) CPU. Its instruction set requirements include SSE2 support, so it will not run successfully on most of the 32-bit CPU types that were supported by Debian 12.
It’s a bit like a henn-egg problem: Debian does no longer support i386 as many projects have dropped their support. Projects drop their support, because there are only few systems with that architecture still in use…
From trixie, i386 is no longer supported as a regular architecture: there is no official kernel and no Debian installer for i386 systems. Fewer packages are available for i386 because many projects no longer support it. The architecture’s sole remaining purpose is to support running legacy code, for example, by way of multiarch or a chroot on a 64-bit (amd64) system.
Debian Trixie just released, and they dropped support for 32-bit x86. You can still run 32-bit software, but the OS must be running on amd64 (aka x86_64). Given the amount of distros which are Debian derivatives, there’s probably not going to be a whole lot of systems around to run 32-bit Firefox on anyway.
The i386 branch still exists, they dropped the installer.
You can upgrade a Debian 12 i386 system just fine to Debian 13
They did explicitly said that it’s completely unsupported scenario. It’s only for multiarch usage so even kernel isn’t provided.
From https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.en.html#reduced-support-for-i386
That depends on the specific CPU model used:
It’s a bit like a henn-egg problem: Debian does no longer support i386 as many projects have dropped their support. Projects drop their support, because there are only few systems with that architecture still in use…
https://www.debian.org/releases/trixie/release-notes/issues.en.html#reduced-support-for-i386