As an owner of two i386 systems (both netbooks built around Intel's Atom N270), that run Debian, I am a little sad. I understand the reasoning, and I won't deny it is a very niche platform by now. But I had hoped Debian, with a history of supporting a wide range of platforms, would keep i386 going for a while longer.
Fortunately, bookworm will continue to receive updates for almost 3 years, so I am not in a hurry to look for a new OS for these relics. OpenBSD looks like the natural successor, but I am not sure if the wifi chips are supported. (And who knows how long these netbooks will continue to work, they were built in 2008 and 2009, so they've had a long life already.)
EDIT: Hooray, thanks to everyone who made this possible, is what I meant to say.
On the rest, I use mutt+msmtp+mbsync, slrn, sfeed, lynx/links, mocp, mupdf for PDF/CBZ/EPUB,
nsxiv for images, tut for Mastodon and Emacs just for Telegram (I installed tdlib from OpenBSD
packages and then I installed Telega from MELPA).
Overall it's a really fast machine. CWM+XTerm+Tmux it's my main environment. I have some SSH
connection open to somewhere else at the 3rd tag (virtual desktop), and the 2nd one for Dillo.
One sits in my bathroom so I can browse random Wikipedia articles while I'm, uh, busy. The other one sits on my nightstand and plays audiobooks/podcasts when I'm going to sleep.
So nothing critical. But something they are still good at, and being very small makes them a natural fit for these use cases.
I can't speak for the other poster, but I like the idea a lot. Having tools with specific purposes means I can avoid using my phone for everything. No matter what games I play to remove notifications/interruptions/etc. it's always a distraction and easy to be distracted from whatever I originally intended to use the phone for.
I do use the phone for audible, but I started both uses before I had a smart phone (I was very late to the game), and I am a creature of habit. Plus the netbook has a bigger display, more storage, and a real keyboard (again, creature of habit).
Fortunately, bookworm will continue to receive updates for almost 3 years, so I am not in a hurry to look for a new OS for these relics. OpenBSD looks like the natural successor, but I am not sure if the wifi chips are supported. (And who knows how long these netbooks will continue to work, they were built in 2008 and 2009, so they've had a long life already.)
EDIT: Hooray, thanks to everyone who made this possible, is what I meant to say.