Re: [PATCH v2] x86: Start removing X86_X32_ABI

[Richard Purdie <richard.purdie@linuxfoundation.org>]

On Wed, 2026-07-08 at 13:26 +0200, Arnd Bergmann wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2026, at 09:36, Sebastian Andrzej Siewior wrote:
> > On 2026-07-08 08:31:30 [+0200], John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> > > > Since there is practically no real use for x32, start removing
> > > > it by
> > > > removing the symbol first, not allowing to enable it. Should
> > > > nothing
> > > > happening by the end of the year, it will removed after the
> > > > last LTS
> > > > kernel this year.
> > > 
> > > As mentioned before, there are still actively maintained Debian
> > > and Gentoo
> > > ports of x32, so I guess the last paragraph is rather subjective.
> > 
> > On the Debian ports side: lacks a browser like firefox or chromium.
> > No
> > native ocaml compiler. libreoffice is not present.
> > Not once released in contrast to kFreeBSD.
> > 
> > This does not look like healthy port that will become eventually a
> > release architecture. To quote the introduction paragraph of
> > ports.d.o:
> > > The goal of this machine is to provide an infrastructure for
> > > unofficial
> > > architectures until they are integrated in the main Debian
> > > archive.
> 
> x32 is a bit different since you can't have a pure x32 distro
> anyway but always need to install an x86_64 distro first
> to get a working kernel and base system before you can choose
> a mix 32-bit and 64-bit packages. This is not that different
> from armhf and i686, which run fine on 64-bit hardware but
> always require you to start with a 64-bit installer. [for
> different reasons though: armhf has an installer but its
> kernel only works on 32-bit machines; i686 kernels can
> theoretically run on older 64-bit hardware but Debian
> no longer provides an installer for it]

FWIW Yocto Project (which cross compiles) can happily build x32 images
and has been able to for years, basically since it was added to the
kernel. It can also mix 32, x32 and 64 bit binaries (and supported n32
on mips too). We do test them nightly under qemu, I think including
boot tests under qemu but I'd have to double check if we still do.

It is very unclear that anyone uses x32 though. If the kernel drops
support, we'll just follow.

Cheers,

Richard