The 32-bit, or to be precise, thex86 architecture was for many of us a sort of “company”, whether the first PCs with Windows 95 installed, or even the first 32-bit consoles (see the very first PlayStation), now there are very few operating systems that “obstinate” wanting to keep this architecture “high”.
Nowadays, basically, from smartphones to PCs, we have 64-bit (almost) everything, whether you want the ARM64 architecture of smartphones and tablets or the x64 architecture of computer motherboards.
Now let’s see how this hardware architecture looks today.
What operating systems still support x86 architecture nowadays?
In reality, there aren’t very many operating systems that support the 32-bit x86 architecture, although there are more than you might imagine.
Windows 10 x86 (32-bit)
Ironically the most operating system world famousWindows, in the Windows 10 version has a 32-bit version which will be supported until 2025.
Usually, however, Windows 10 32-bit compared to other operating systems (for example based on Linux), has significant hardware requirements for the average x86 hardware, this greatly limits its installation on older machines.
It is no coincidence that 32-bit Windos 10 was usually pre-installed on 64-bit machines but with “weak” hardware (for example with only 2 GB of RAM), such as some convertibles from the early 2000s in which, although architecture was x64, the BIOS limited installation to the x86 version of Windows 8.1 and 10.
Windows 11, subsequently, will definitively abandon the 32-bit.
ReactOs, a curious copy of Windows
Initially known as “FreeWin95”, later proposing itself as the “open source heir to Windows”, reactOSis basically an operating system that seeks to replace older versions of Windows, trying to carry on the old school 90s Windows.
Unfortunately, although the operating system runs quite fast on dated equipment with x86 architecture, since it requires very low hardware resources; unfortunately it is far from being a stable system.
The lack of suitable drivers (mostly their availability) and not exactly optimal compatibility, means that this system often shows the equivalent of the BSOD (blue screen of death) of Windows systems, with which we have more or less all had to do at least once in our life computing.
Has the Linux world thought about the x86 architecture?
If on the one hand the answer is yes, on the other there is a curious fact: Ubuntu and related distributions abandoned the 32-bit x86 architecture long before Windows, making it hard for users who still use 32-bit machines.
However, there are dedicated operating systems that are specially designed for the very old computers they use Still the x86 architecture.
Q4OS
With minimal graphics and recalling the historical Windows (a bit 95/98, a bit ME), Q4OS it is proposed as an alternative to restore old computers, curiously it also natively supports Nvidia drivers (which is not at all obvious in the Linux world).
Zorin OS Lite x86
Also ZorinOS which proposes itself as “the Linux replacement for Windows” has its own version for x86 architecture, the download link is a bit hidden (want to discontinue it permanently? Who knows…), but it’s there.
Puppy Linux
Like Q4OS, Puppy Linux also proposes, with even more minimal graphics, to recover these old devices.
These are just some of the best known, but there are really plenty of Linux distributions, just do some research on any search engine to realize it, even with x86 architecture.
Performance issues
Sadly the vast majority of these PCs will struggle to run a YouTube video at even 360p to figure this out, so you need to consider whether it’s worth the candle in resurrecting these old machines.
Of course, if you don’t have pretensions, you just look at your email every now and then, and you use your old x86 PC for retrogaming or as a “typewriter”, maybe it can make sense, in other cases it doesn’t.
The x86 architecture “embedded” in the x64
Given that 32-bit architecture has been a part of a large part of our “computing life”, in fact it cannot be ignored.
Both on Windows and on Linux, in fact, it is possible in some way to “recall” it with compatibility tools or with “tricks”.
Windows x64 natively manages to run x86 programs without many problems, it is true that there may be a need to special librariesbut many programs “heirs” of this architecture often do their utmost to install what you need on your PC.
Similarly, Linux has the ability to add the x86 architecture with a simple terminal command line (sudo dpkg –add-architecture i386), when you do sudo aptupdateand later sudo apt upgradethe software will arrange for them to “put in place”.
And so, although the era of 32-bit machines is over, somehow the x86 architecture has in fact left an indelible mark, which is still visible on software today.
#x86 #era #32bit #architectures