We mentioned earlier that Debian is the only major-league distribution still supporting 32-bit x86 hardware. This is an oversimplification, because we are simple journalists, after all. You are no doubt gasping to point out that several 32-bit versions of Ubuntu can have their support window extended well into the future (see box, page 38). Be that as it may, Debian 12 will be supported until 2028 and, thanks to its configurability, it is a fine distro for your dusty old hardware. There’s also a number of lightweight distros based on it, including AntiX, MX Linux and Crunchbangplusplus (aka #!++), a continuation of the popular CrunchBang project. Obviously, there are non-Debian-based distros that still support 32-bit machinery – more on those later.
For this section, we want to concentrate on what, in our opinion, If you’re not a fan of the slightly Windows-like Cinnamon desktop, you can easily install something else. Most likely this will be something lightweight such as MATE (ideal if you yearn for Gnome 2 stylings), Xfce or even LXQt.
