Sunsetting grml32 releases
Since 2007 Grml is available for two different architectures for PCs: grml32 (“i386”, 32-bit) and grml64 (“amd64”, 64-bit). The grml64 releases, and the underlying Debian “amd64” were introduced for PCs with more than 4GB of memory, and the then “upcoming” new CPUs, spear-headed by AMD.
In the meantime the PC landscape changed a lot. Intel jumped on the “amd64” train, and abandoned their own ia64 (“Itanium”) design. Modern PCs often do not properly support the old 32-bit architecture anymore. Even PCs manufactured ten years ago can boot grml32 and grml64. No new 32-bit only CPUs are manufactured, and no new features got added. Testing grml32 became a lot harder, and testing on a “real 32-bit only” hardware is now impossible for us.
Linux kernel upstream also is losing interest and time to support the 32-bit architecture (just called “x86”) there. The Debian kernel team decided to stop building Linux kernel packages starting with Linux 6.11.
As Grml releases are dependent on Debian kernel packages, this decision also ends the line for grml32.
Users who really need grml32 due to lack of 64-bit support on their hardware can still use Grml 2024.02, which will be the last release with a grml32 build. However, we encourage users to migrate to more modern, possibly used, hardware instead.
Only one thing left to say, to the classic Intel 32-bit x86, “i386”, or whatever you want to call it architecture:
So long, and thanks for all the fish.