Debian's tagline is the "universal operating system". It's a distribution with active ports on a very large number of architectures [1], even incredibly obscure ones.

The goal of universal compatibility that separates the Debian project from commercial software and even other open-source projects.

The legacy x86 architecture is still far more popular than some that platforms that Debian advertises as having official support for and there has been x86 based processors manufactured for niche applications until recently, eg, AMD Geode and others.

I find it really unfortunate Debian Project is removing official support for new x86 installations. The silver lining is it seems like they'll be an unofficial port and it's likely niche distributions like MX Linux and AntiX will maintain their own builds.

It would be ideal if open-source can develop stronger mechanims to keep support for the large numbers of these relatively niche architectures (eg, through increased usage of emulation over real hardware).

[1] https://wiki.debian.org/SupportedArchitectures

My Linux machine is very modern, but I still need i386 architecture support installed, because Steam requires 32-bit support. And Steam requires 32-bit support so people can play 15-year-old games.

(Admittedly, the 32-bit support Ubuntu ships is less than a full OS and you can't install Ubuntu on a 32-bit machine these days)

According to Passmark the Pentinum 4 1.3Ghz is 55 times slower than a Raspberry Pi 5, so I'd guess it's at least two orders of magnitude. The original Pi is 16 times faster than a P4 1.3Ghz...

You can recycle e-waste (and yes, I know SOME e-waste ends up in China/India/etc. Not all does.)

The e-waste is of substantially less concern than the massive difference in carbon footprint from power consumption.