Quoting KatolaZ (katolaz@???):

> Strange as it may sound to you, yes, there are still many users who
> are using i386 hw, and the only reasonable way for them to continue
> use those hw is by having Linux.

While I'm sure this is true for some number of people, aren't these now
incredibly old computers? (I say this as someone still running his
flagship Internet server on an antique PIII, by the way.)

While you can point to various IA-32 CPUs produced over the years by
Intel/Harris Corporation/Chips and Technologies, AMD/NexGen,
VIA/Centaur/IDT, Transmeta, Cyrix/TI/SGS-Thomson/IBM/National
Semiconductor, NEC, Siemens, Rise Technology, United Microelectronics
Corporation/Meridian Semiconductor, UMC, DM&P Electronics/SiS, ZF Micro,
Zet, RDC Semiconductors, ao486, ALi, Nvidia,and possibly others, to the
best of my recollection everyone moved to a x86_64 flavour around
2003-ish (or exited the market). So, I estimate that these computers
are at least 14 years old.

I nurse along a totally obsolete 2001 rackmount beast myself, so I won't
preach to others against doing so, but decade-plus-old computers are
fragile and require specialty parts if it's ever necessary to repair
them. Which, I would argue, is one of a number of reasons why this is
fairly considered a specialty niche in 2017, that actually merits
discouraging for new installations.

I mean, I did install Debian m68k on an antique (circa 1990) Apple
Macintosh IIci -- 25 MHz Motorola 68030 CPU, 4MB standard RAM expandable
using up to 16 x 4 MB 80ns 30-pin SIMMs, SCSI 40MB hard disk -- and
you can still do that in 2017, but... really. Friends asked me how it
ran Debian, and I replied 'Well, it walked Debian briskly.'


> All those users are being left without any other choice than throwing
> their hw away by many distributions, without a concrete motivation
> (well, except the usual "it's old so it must be thrown away", which is
> as popular as lame these days...)
>
> Why should Devuan do the same?

IMO: Because of the year on the current calendar.