14 DAY TRIAL // The 32-bit architecture is slowing going away, but not too many developers are keen to let it go. A proposal is being made so that Fedora 23 will only be released with 64-bit images.
Many users have already switched to 64-bit a long time ago and they must be wondering why there is still a need for the 32-bit architecture. It creates headaches because many app developers don't actively support it anymore and it's becoming too expensive to maintain.
The problem is that even if the number of users of 32-bit operating systems has been dropping in the past couple of years, it's still not low enough. There are many people out there that still have old computers with old hardware and they can't afford to upgrade. It will be a problem for years to come, but they don't have to despair.
Now, a proposal is being made for Fedora 23 (far off into the future, maybe a year or more) to drop the 32-bit support, for the official images. The community would still provide a separate release, if that's really necessary.
"I am going to make the uncomfortable and ugly proposal to drop 32 bit in Fedora 23 and only look at 64 bit architectures as primary architectures. All 32 bit architectures (arm7hl, i386) would be moved to being secondary architectures that would require their own build teams and 'koji' to maintain builds in future releases," Stephen John Smoogen wrote on his blog.
This is still a proposal and nothing has been decided just yet, but you can expect more distros to do the same thing in the future.