Cross-posted with above
I wouldn't be surprised if Raspberry Pi eventually walk the path of "it's old, throw it away, you need to buy something more modern" as Microsoft and others do, but would like to know where they stand, what the roadmap is, and ideally as early as possible rather than waking up one day to discover support has ended.
Like others I cannot see support for 32-bit being dropped while 32-bit products are still in production. And there should be a period after that while 32-bit OS keep getting updates. But at some point those OS will no longer be supported and won't even get security updates.
At some point it will become "throw it away or keep using an unsupported OS which isn't receiving security updates" which really isn't recommended.
The issue is three-fold - What the future holds for 32-bit Pi and what the strategy should be for using 32-bit on 64-bit capable Pi to allow SD Cards to also be used on 32-bit Pi, or to maintain exact equivalence when both 64-bit and 32-bit Pi are used.
I still buy, use and deploy, 32-bit Pi and I would like to be able to make an informed decision on when that will stop being a sensible thing to do. Likewise in respect of installing a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit capable Pi.
Everything pre-2016 was 32-bit only, and Zero W after that. That appears to amounts to over 8 million Pi sold which are 32-bit only. That may be les than 15% of all Pi sold, and decreasing by the day, but it's still a significant number.32bit is really old tech these days
I wouldn't be surprised if Raspberry Pi eventually walk the path of "it's old, throw it away, you need to buy something more modern" as Microsoft and others do, but would like to know where they stand, what the roadmap is, and ideally as early as possible rather than waking up one day to discover support has ended.
Like others I cannot see support for 32-bit being dropped while 32-bit products are still in production. And there should be a period after that while 32-bit OS keep getting updates. But at some point those OS will no longer be supported and won't even get security updates.
At some point it will become "throw it away or keep using an unsupported OS which isn't receiving security updates" which really isn't recommended.
The issue is three-fold - What the future holds for 32-bit Pi and what the strategy should be for using 32-bit on 64-bit capable Pi to allow SD Cards to also be used on 32-bit Pi, or to maintain exact equivalence when both 64-bit and 32-bit Pi are used.
I still buy, use and deploy, 32-bit Pi and I would like to be able to make an informed decision on when that will stop being a sensible thing to do. Likewise in respect of installing a 32-bit OS on a 64-bit capable Pi.
Statistics: Posted by hippy — Mon Sep 01, 2025 10:31 am