Can Gentoo save my 32bit hardware?

[Engaged-Unbundle]

I have an old laptop. It has a 64bit CPU but the mainboard can't support it so it's stuck on Ubuntu(Xbuntu), which is dropping 32bit support next year.

The laptop has 4gb of RAM and is functioning as a headless file server but with the nice option to be the household linux box. I could upgrade it to SSD. In other words: It's bad to throw it in the trash.

Can Gentoo really save this piece of hardware? And if so, to what degree?

I heard that vulnerabilities haven't been well patched for 32bit. What I could do is just keep the server on a private network.
Then, assuming it's possible to get something very well maintained, just keep a VPN up to date enough to publicly expose and then tunnel in, if and when I need it. (or that other super-easy VPN-like alternative I've forgotten the name of)

Finally, I really don't want a lot of hassle keeping this thing updated. The last time I used Gentoo about 10 years ago I found that it worked great at first but after 5-10 system wide upgrades something would break and need manual intervention. Also, I needed to monitor config files on every upgrade, which was a lot of hassle, time I don't have anymore to deal with, sadly.

Any comments on this plan? Perhaps I should just keep it exactly how it is, let it get out of date and get a separate Raspberry Pi just for the linux itch?

[Ionen]

As long as the cpu at least have sse2 support, then x86 gentoo works just fine and isn't going anywhere. You'll be building packages based on the same ebuilds that get used for amd64 so it's neither behind nor generally less secure (albeit less tested).

No sse2 can work too but it can be more annoying (especially when rust or go is involved, rust is becoming harder to avoid entirely).

4GB isn't too bad to compile too, although you may optionally prefer to build binpkgs on another machine since it's faster (can notably be done in a x86 chroot on an amd64 machine without too much hassle).

As for updating, problems tend to come up when you don't update often (i.e. wait months/years to update anything), if you update regularly while keeping sane configs and reading news, then there's rarely issues, especially nowadays in stable -- maybe was wilder 10 years ago but I wasn't there

If not staying headless I hope it's not a nvidia laptop though, nvidia official support for old hardware is pretty down the dumps (esp laptop offloading and x86 -- nvidia doesn't even support x86 in newer drivers) and may require workarounds in Gentoo because of it. Although nouveau can work most of the time, just not great beside just giving you a working display (but is more future proof and shouldn't become a hassle).

[Engaged-Unbundle]

Thanks. I appreciate it. Yes, I think it has SSE2 so that's good to hear.

"although you may optionally prefer to build binpkgs on another machine"

My main laptop is a Mac. I'm not sure I want to setup a whole build environment just for this. Just curious; Is there a worker I can run on osx just to help processing only and let the Gentoo box do more of the work? I know there was something, but I've forgotten what it was called.

[Ionen]

[NeddySeagoon]

Engaged-Unbundle,

You can install Parallels on your Mac and install Gentoo as a guest.
That Gentoo can do whatever you want.
distcc
binhost

An x86 install on the laptop will see about 3G RAM which is plenty to build most things.

As a first step, do a normal x86 on the laptop and see how it goes. Helpers can be added later.
All Gentoo installs are built from the same codebase, using the same ebuilds.
x86 is not as well tested as amd64

I'm curious about

[libfab]

MKG may save you some time.
This software has been designed to help people like you, who need Gentoo for practical purposes yet have little time to spend on it.
Currently MKG only works for amd64 (Gnome, Plasma openrc and systemd profiles, hardened profiles are being tested).
If all goes well, MKG should support x86 before late October.
If you so wish, send me a PM and I'll keep you informed of how to test and install.
Installing a Gentoo platform is just a matter of running a short command line on your amd64 platform (be it Linux or Parallels on a Mac, or even WSL2 on Windows).
The output is a DVD or USB stick installer.
The rest of the process is headless.

[flysideways]

I have used VirtualBox on my macbook to host Gentoo. One advantage is the ability to pause the guest.

Installing to a decent usb 3 thumb drive is also an option now.

[flysideways]

I have some Pi Zero's that I mount as OTG devices from my macbook, either with ssh or RealVNC. The macbook internet connection is also shared with the Pi Zero that way. Those Pi Zero's are using Raspberry Pi OS.

Then there are 8GB Pi4's with Gentoo ...

[joanandk]