14 DAY TRIAL // Today, December 1, 2015, Google has announced that they will no longer provide 32-bit DEB packages of the Google Chrome web browser for select GNU/Linux operating systems.
The brief announcement was made an hour ago by Dirk Pranke on the Chromium-dev group, and it informs users of Ubuntu and Debian GNU/Linux distributions that, starting March 2016, the Google Chrome web browser will no longer be available for 32-bit hardware platforms.
Additionally, Google also says that future releases of the Google Chrome web browser will no longer be supported on the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (Precise Pangolin) and Debian GNU/Linux 7 (Wheezy) OSes, urging users to update to Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) and Debian GNU/Linux 8 (Jessie), respectively.
According to Mr. Pranke, the decision to end support for Google Chrome on 32-bit Linux operating system was made to provide GNU/Linux users with the best experience possible. As you might know, Google Chrome is currently distributed as DEB and RPM binary packages for various distributions.
"To provide the best experience for the most-used Linux versions, we will end support for Google Chrome on 32-bit Linux, Ubuntu Precise (12.04), and Debian 7 (wheezy) in early March, 2016," said Dirk Pranke, Technical Staff at Google. "Chrome will continue to function on these platforms but will no longer receive updates and security fixes."
Today's announcement also mentions the fact that Google will continue to support the 32-bit build configurations for those who want to build the open-source Chromium web browser on various Linux kernel-based operating systems.