[pilif]

I wasn't discounting VMs with my initial statement. I can totally imagine quite a few VMs still being around, either migrated from physical hardware or even set up fresh to conserve resources.

Plus, keeping i386 the same also means any still available support for running 32 bit binaries on 64 bit machines.

All of these cases (especially the installable 32 bit support) must be as big or bigger than the amount of ARM machines out there.

[axus]

In the Linux binary context, do i386 and i686 mean the same thing? i686 seems relatively modern in comparison, even if it's 32-bit.

[mananaysiempre]

Few places still maintain genuine i386 support—I don’t believe the Linux kernel does, for example. There some important features it lacks, such as CMPXCHG. Nowadays Debian’s i386 is actually i686 (Pentium Pro), but apparently they’ve decided to introduce a new “i686” architecture label to denote a 32-bit x86 ABI with a 64-bit time_t.

Also, I’m sorry to have to tell you that the 80386 came out in 1985 (with the Compaq Deskpro 386 releasing in 1986) and the Pentium Pro in 1995. That is, i686 is three times closer to i386 than it is to now.

[bobmcnamara]

Opt in numbers here: https://popcon.debian.org/

[pilif]

that tells me my snark about i386 being the most commonly used 32 bit architecture wasn't too far off reality, doesn't it?

[bobmcnamara]

Indeed - i386 is certainly the most common 32-bit Debian platform.

Note also that the numbers are log-scale, so while it looks like Arm64 is a close third over all bitwidths, it isn't.

[umanwizard]

I'm actually amazed by this, I would have bet a lot on aarch64 being second.

[bobmcnamara]

Debian doesn't support Arm64 Mac...

[umanwizard]

You can run whatever distro you want in a VM, though. My daily driver is GuixSD in an aarch64 VM on a Mac. I wouldn’t recommend guixsd if you don’t love tinkering and troubleshooting, but otherwise the setup works fine.