Re: Lubuntu 32-bit
Otniel Doetzel
Lubuntu is distributed on three types of images described below.Desktop imageThe desktop image allows you to try Lubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later. This type of image is what most people will want to use. You will need at least 1024MiB of RAM to install from this image.
Choose this if you have a computer based on the AMD64 or EM64T architecture (e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon, Core 2). If you have a non-64-bit processor made by AMD, or if you need full support for 32-bit code, use the i386 images instead. Choose this if you are at all unsure.
For almost all PCs. This includes most machines with Intel/AMD/etc type processors and almost all computers that run Microsoft Windows, as well as newer Apple Macintosh systems based on Intel processors.
The desktop image allows you to try Lubuntu without changing your computer at all, and at your option to install it permanently later. You will need at least 1024MiB of RAM to install from this image.
Download lubuntu, a fast and lightweight Linux operating system. Lubuntu uses LXDE/LXQT and a selection of light applications. It focuses on speed and energy-efficiency. Because of this, Lubuntu has very low hardware requirements.
This image was created using the Ubuntu Pi Flavour Maker. For the Raspberry Pi 2 the microSDHC I/O throughput is a bottleneck. Recommended: Use a Class 6 or Class 10 microSDHC card. More information here.
Intel Atom N450 is 64-bit so I would stick to a 64-bit and match the minimum specs for any of the Ubuntu flavours. lUbuntu and xUbuntu are options. Beyond that: do consider alternatives that are around but not Ubuntu; like Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux.
According to your computer specification, you should use 32bit system.64bit system can use more than 4GBs of RAM, but it's useless when you have only one. What is more, 32bit would be safer for this processor. Lubuntu is the most lightweight distribution (AFAIK), so this is also good for this computer.
i386 or 32-bit is more efficient with smaller memory addresses (excluding local addressing) so i386 makes better use of your limited RAM and is generally what I'd pick on releases up to 18.04; however you can't upgrade i386 so that's a plus for amd64.
I'd decide by what applications you'll run, will they benefit by having slightly more ram? plus your CPU; does it run amd64 faster than i386 as more modern cpus usually do. In QA-testing I find various boxes perform differently so my answer can vary on a box (ie. cpu).
The wordsize hit 32bit/4byte vs 64bits/8bytes isn't that great, is generally about equal to the performance loss of running the older i386 code vs. more native amd64 on modern cpus. On older/earlier CPUs though; the i386 generally didn't have the performance hit when compared with amd64 execution unlike more modern cpus.
Subjectively I'd like 2GB for amd64 as a minimum; and it was all I used in QA-testing 19.10 and later (though I did keep a pentium 4 i386 box upgrading until the building of packages for i386 stopped late in the beta cycle of eoan)
I have a bit older machine on which I have been successfully running Ubuntu (recently Lubuntu) for a number of years. Lubuntu informs that there is no longer a 32-bit version for Lubuntu 20.4 only 64-bit. Will I be able to use it?
I am owner of the Prusa i3 MK3. To slice I usually use slic3r. Now, I want to use my older laptop to slice directly in the studio (my workshop in the cellar). I googled for a 32 Bit version for Linux, but was not able to find one.
I can't help with the Debian part, but yes, there are x86 binaries (RPM, for openSUSE) in the repository I provided a link to. (And yes, you're right, it's a maze.) Perhaps you may have a luck installing them with 'alien'.
Acutally cloning the github link ( ) is where I started. Following the instructions did not help. I was missing something or it was not mentioned for 32-Bit Linux? I have got a lot of errors of missing libraries. Installing them afterwards did also not help. I got more and more missing libraries. When all the libraries were there, the process of compiling suddenly stopped, with no meaningfull error message.
Thanks for the links. Installing using "alien" and "dpkg -i" was no problem form the fedora rpm package. When I start "slic3r-prusa3d" I have got the error message "libwx_gtk3u ..." missing. Im my system (lubuntu 16.04) was only "libwx_gtk2u..." installed.
I was such an idiot. after compiling the whole stuff in the /deps/ directory, I thought that I have to compile it again in the /src/ directory. There (in /src/) I allways got this PrecompiledHeader error. I have seen this morning, that after compiling everything in the /deps/ directory, there is the final verison in .../deps/src/ called .../deps/src/slic3r-gui. And ... IT WORKS!
To compile I added a lot of packages in my lubuntu 18.10 (see lubuntu18.10.markings). I was mostly confused, which 'curl' library (-dev version) I had to choose. The ones in the actual file (lubuntu18.10.markings) work, but are probably ways too many libraries.
Many distros no longer include both 32-bit and 64-bit bootloader support. Unfortunately some hardware including most based on the relatively recent Intel Atom processor architecture won't boot 'OOTB'. Whilst I wrote 'isorespin.sh' and 'isorespinner.sh' in part to address this issue I restricted their functionality to the Ubuntu 'family' of ISOs for support purposes. One of the most frequest questions I have been asked is 'can you add support for ISOs?'. Unfortunately distros, even those based on or derived from Ubuntu, are often built with different directory structures and packages. As a result writing a script that caters for multiple distros becomes complex and cumbersome. However with Ubuntu looking to move to a new snap-based installer I've revisited the 32-bit boot issue.
Initially I created a simple script 'treetoobitiso.sh' to just add the 32-bit GRUB bootloader to the Ubuntu 'family' of ISOs. But if a different distro uses a similar file system layout then essentialy there is no reason why it also wouldn't work so I've extended this script to include an '--unsupported' option to allow running, or at least attempt running, with any ISO.
Once booted an installation will be dependent on the ISO's installer. Typically it will try to install a 64-bit GRUB bootloader however it may also fail as whilst it recognises that it was booted by a 32-bit bootloader it likely will not have the code to handle such an installation.
So I've created a companion script 'treetoobit.sh' to install a 32-bit GRUB bootloader during an installation attempt and again, whilst the Ubuntu 'family' of ISOs is supported, if the ISO is Debian/Ubuntu based (i.e. uses the 'apt' package manager) then it may also work using the '--unsupported' option.
Others use a random name for the mount point and may not leave both the 'installation' and 'boot' partitions mounted at the end of the installation. It is best to first run 'lsblk -a' to see the current state and then perform any required mounting manually.
Unfortunately not all installations will complete successfully and depending on what the installer still had left to do means there may be additional manual steps required (hence the 'unsupported' caveat). In the case of Debian looking at the Calamares installer indicates that this includes removing the 'live-*' and 'calamares-settings-debian' packages.
Please consider reading the Ventoy documentation, if not done already. Both the Win10 and Linux systems offer some convenient GUI tool capable of installing a GrUB2-based bootloader once the drive got "initialized" (as a GPT unit on my CherryTrail); Combined to 'rEFInd' i found the likeliness to survive an "update" has improved while dual-boot became 2nd nature. Plus, read-only "frugal" mode booting from an .ISO image file might actually save the day when time is short, etc...
Whilst 'Ventoy' addresses the booting aspect of ISOs on devices using a 32-bit bootloader, 'treetoobit' in particular is trying to simplify the installation issues for those devices especially for beginners looking to install an Ubuntu/Ubuntu flavoured ISO including when using the new Ubuntu 'snap' desktop installer.
unfortunately i can't get it to work, either with a ubuntu server to prepare the ISO or a linux mint installation at the last step, i chmod 777 the .sh file, when using either .\ or bash treetoobit.sh it says the"this script runs as root" and then immediatly fails with "bash, command not found"
more testing, i've booted a clean mint 21 xfce iso from ventoy, downloaded treetoobit, and when run it gives me the "ISO must be an Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Lubuntu, Ubuntu Budgie, Ubuntu GNOME, Ubuntu MATE, Xubuntu or Linux Mint desktop ISO." error, then quits.
aaand more testing, did a full install with the stock iso, then ran with --unsupported after the install.
now i get "cannot download 32-bit grub packages, exiting".
Manually running "apt download grub-efi-ia32-bin grub-efi-ia32" fails, i had to run one apt download per file.
Those downloads are tarballs, one of them(the -bin) has the .deb file the script is expecting. the other one has nothing