Do you have an old computer? Do you love KDE Plasma? If your desktop or laptop was produced before 2011 or has memory no more than 4GB, it might be 32-bit, like those with Intel Pentium or AMD Athlon processor. You can revive it with one of KDE Plasma Desktop systems mentioned in this article, for example, Debian or Tumbleweed, and you can do your daily work with up to date applications and even games.
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Terminology
PC 32-bit is often also called x86, i386, i486, i586, or i686. Operating systems mentioned below provide their ISO image files with either one of these terms. Read Explanation of AMD64 and I386 Architectures.
KDE Plasma is one among many Free Software Desktop Systems. It helps the user to interacts with their computer more easily. It is modern, traditional looking, has familiar feelings, simple by default and powerful when needed. It is the oldest FSDS as well as the most full featured one.
Debian KDE
Debian is the largest and most universal computer operating system on earth based on GNU and Linux. Debian supports all free software, all hardware types, and being highly influential as the basis of hundreds of other operating systems including Ubuntu. Debian 11 "Bullseye" supports PC 32-bit and you can benefit from its tens of thousands of software packages to empower your old desktop and laptop. You can choose to install either Debian Full DVD by later selecting KDE Plasma as the desktop, or, download Debian Live KDE and install it easily.
Download Debian DVD: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current/i386/iso-dvd/
Download Debian Live KDE: https://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/current-live/i386/iso-hybrid/
Mageia
The true successor of the discontinued Mandriva (was the first user-friendly distro before Ubuntu, a KDE distro before Kubuntu), full featured and well documented. Mageia 8 is available as PC 32-bit DVD installer in which the user can install with KDE Plasma.
Download Mageia: visit mageia.org/en/downloads → select Classic Installer → select 32-bit → select Direct Link.
openmamba
Porteus
Download Porteus: visit http://porteus.org/porteus-mirrors.html → click one link from list of links → select i586 → select latest version folder by newest date → download Porteus-KDE-*-i586.iso.
Slackware
This is the oldest living GNU/Linux, and at the same time, the oldest KDE distro although it is advanced user oriented. Slackware, being not as known as Ubuntu in mainstream, is very actively developed thanks to the committed community behind it. Slackware version 14.2 (released 2016) is still available for PC 32-bit, can be upgraded to Slackware Current for latest packages, and can also be equipped with Slackbuilds.org repository as well. At the time we write this article, Slackware 15 Beta has been announced and also still support PC 32-bit with KDE and all mentioned features.Download Slackware: http://www.slackware.com/getslack
Trisquel KDE
Triskel
is the name of Trisquel KDE Edition, named in the same spirit of
"Kool", the K letter of the KDE name. Trisquel is a stable operating
system based on Ubuntu which is completely free software without any nonfree software inside and is officially endorsed by the Free Software
Foundation. You can install Triskel 10 (the latest version today) and
benefit from its tens of thousands of 32-bit software packages.Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed
is the name of openSUSE rolling-release edition, that is, the only one
that still supports PC 32-bit. Tumbleweed does not number itself with
version numbers, unlike Ubuntu 20.04 or Windows 7, but instead whatever
version downloaded from the official website is always the latest
version. You can install the DVD version with KDE Plasma Desktop and
benefit from its supplying latest version of tens of thousands of 32-bit
software packages.Download Tumbleweed for installation: visit https://get.opensuse.org/tumbleweed → click Download → click Download beside Offline Image under Intel/AMD 32-bit (i686) section.
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