Firefox to end support for 32-bit Linux in 2026

[harlan4096]

Mozilla has announced that it will end support for Firefox on 32-bit Linux systems in 2026. This shouldn't affect most users, but still it's something worth mentioning.

It may seem surprising that Mozilla has supported 32-bit Linux for so long, and indeed it has. For reference, Google Chrome ended support for 32-bit Linux in 2016. So in 2026, Mozilla will have supported 32-bit Linux for ten years longer than Chrome did. That's pretty cool.

How many people still use Linux 32 bit? I can't find the exact statistics about it, but I took a look at the Firefox Public Data Report's Hardware section. It appears that, as of August 2025, 86.761% of Firefox users are on 64-bit computers. 4.550% of users have a 64-bit ARM computer, I'm assuming that includes Apple Silicon Macs, and Snapdragon computers. Only 8.689% of Firefox users have a 32-bit computer. It's unclear how many Linux 32-bit users this translates to.

Mozilla's announcement says 32-bit Linux is not supported by many Linux distros, and that maintaining a version of Firefox for the platform has become harder. Most Linux distros like Ubuntu, Mint, Fedora require a 64-bit processor. Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE) still supports 32-bit systems. Debian 13 lets you run 32-bit apps, but the distro itself has dropped support for the i386 architecture. Debian 12 is still supported, LTS ends on June 30, 2028. I'm sure there are other distros that support 32-bit, but it's becoming rarer.

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