Why there is no Bitcoin Core build for windows 32 bit?

[kostepanych2]

There are only 64 bit builds for windows.
https://bitcoin.org/en/download
Why there are no 32 bit builds?

[TryNinja]

The Windows 32 bit build has been removed from https://bitcoincore.org/en/download/, so unless there are complaints, we don't need to build it even

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/15939

It was removed 3 days ago: https://github.com/bitcoin-dot-org/bitcoin.org/commit/1ad11c087fe247f13f0117e3b098858fb9e7229e

Why they did that? I'm not sure.

[posi]

As TryNinja said no reason was said or mentioned for purpose of the Bitcoin core win32 bit deletion but with my research I believed it was deleted because the 32 bit version was been difficult to run the new bitcoin core and the problem are mostly affected by computers running Windows.

[achow101]

The Windows 32-bit has had some performance and other issues. While it still works, it does also hold back some other future improvements. By removing it now, we won't have to worry about supporting Windows 32-bit for those future improvements. You can read the discussion about this here: http://www.erisian.com.au/meetbot/bitcoin-core-dev/2019/bitcoin-core-dev.2019-04-11-19.00.log.html (it's during the Platform Deprecation topic towards the end).

It was removed under the assumption that few or no people were using Windows 32-bit.

Note that Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 still had Windows 32-bit binaries built. They simply weren't uploaded for now. If there is enough people who are using Windows 32-bit, they can and will be uploaded too and future releases will have them as well.

[v1.0]

It was removed under the assumption that few or no people were using Windows 32-bit.

Ok. There's the better part of 100 million 32-bit Windows users. So when are we going to see 0.18.0 available to us??

**edit: or the assumption that that there are little to no users running Core on win32 bit?

[TryNinja]

Ok. There's the better part of 100 million 32-bit Windows users. So when are we going to see 0.18.0 available to us??

**edit: or the assumption that that there are little to no users running Core on win32 bit?

I don't see the devs doing that unless somehow a lot of 32-bit users appear complaining about this.

You can always build it yourself the 32-bit version tho: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/15939/commits/faf666f8148eeb305a9c4f78459aff2c7268016b#diff-cf863d8f4bd60d88add10b46df304bb4

[achow101]

Ok. There's the better part of 100 million 32-bit Windows users. So when are we going to see 0.18.0 available to us??

**edit: or the assumption that that there are little to no users running Core on win32 bit?

Of course the assumption that there are little to no users running Core on win32. We don't care about how many people overall are using a particular platform, what matters is how many of those people are running or want to run Bitcoin Core on that platform.

As evidence for this, the number of people who have publicly complained about not having Windows 32 bit builds for Bitcoin Core 0.18.0 in the past 2 months could be counted on one hand.

If you really must have a Windows 32 bit download for 0.18.0, I have uploaded it to my own github repository (I upload the result of all of my gitian builds there). You can check that it's hash matches the hashes that everyone else who did gitian builds by checking the files here. Please note that the Windows 32 bit build has been removed from the gitian builds so I will not make Windows 32 bit builds for those future releases. Minor versions of 0.18 should still have Windows 32 bit builds as part of gitian so I will be uploading those.

[Kakmakr]

I think Microsoft stopped mainstream support of Windows 7 on January 13, 2015, but they know it was a very popular operating system, so they said you'll still be able to use it safely for another five years, but after that they would stop supporting it. So we are very close to the End-of-life for 32-bit Operating Systems.

So my thinking is this, if Microsoft stops support for Windows 7 and some exploit is found, then everything running on that platform would be compromised too and Microsoft would just wash their hands, because they stopped supporting it. It would therefore be wise to upgrade to a 64bit OS to protect yourself from bugs in End-of-life products.  

[Pmalek]

@Kakmakr
I did some research about the differences between mainstream and extended support. What it means for Windows 7 users is that Microsoft has stopped adding new features but they are still providing bug fixes and patches until 14 January 2020 but with much less support. Lets just say the Windows 7 OS is no longer on top of their priority list.

It is explained very well in this article
http://home.bt.com/tech-gadgets/computing/what-is-the-difference-between-windows-mainstream-support-and-extended-support-11364050710601

[TimeBits]

There are only 64 bit builds for windows.
https://bitcoin.org/en/download
Why there are no 32 bit builds?

Better question why are you using a 32 bit build? If you got more than 4 gigs of ram it is wasted and if you have a graphics card I think it is like 2.6 gigs of ram, depending on the card, also windows dedicates some of the ram right off the bat to.

Just use 64 bit man, We went from Playstation 1 (32 bit) to Playstation 3 (64 bit) a long time ago, just like how people will go from bitcoin to bitcoin 64 in the future, the old games (bitcoins) will run on the new systems. Like how ps1 or ps2 games run on ps3.