Lubuntu will stop providing 32-bit versions starting from 19.04

Developers of the Lubuntu project have announced through their official website that their LXDE/LXQt, a downstream project for Ubuntu Linux, no longer provides a 32-bit x86 version, which means that Lubuntu has also given up on the 32-bit version. However, the Lubuntu 18.04 LTS that has been released will not give up the maintenance of the 32-bit version and continue to provide technical support until April 2021.

Lubuntu Community and the LXQt team [GPL (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html)], via Wikimedia Commons

At this point, the main Ubuntu derivatives have gradually got rid of the “32-bit” hardware devices in fewer and fewer markets.

“As an increasing number of Linux distributions have focused their attention on the 64-bit x86 architecture (amd64) and not on i386, we have found that it is harder to support than it once was. With i386-only machines becoming an artifact of the past, it has become increasingly clear to the Lubuntu Team that we need to evaluate its removal from the architectures we support. After careful consideration, we regret to inform our users that Lubuntu 19.04 and future versions will not see a release for the i386 architecture. Please do note that we will continue to support Lubuntu 18.04 LTS i386 users as a first-class citizenuntil its End of Life date in April of 2021.”

So for those who are still using outdated x86 32-bit systems, *buntu 18.04 LTS is almost the end of the ISO version of this popular Debian-based distribution.