Just stick with bookworm? It'll have LTS support until 2033. Though you really should consider replacing hardware that old.
My father had given my grandma a 486 (or maybe even 386) laptop with Windows 3.11 when that was already severely outdated. As a result I can now listen to her memoirs because she was able to type them up in Word.
What I want to say is, if the machine is working for them just leave it be. Especially with the LTS.
Sure, I've got some ancient machines myself but I don't try to run the latest the software on them. Only reason for that is if you need to use them on the internet in which case for security and compatibility it's better to use newer hardware.
@foxy @alpinelinux @VoidLinux @debian I switched to Slackware 15 for 32 bit support about 2 years ago... Debian and systemd is too heavy for i386 hardware
A possible option is to stick to Debian 13, but use a hand-built kernel, since Debian 13 still includes the i386 port. Of course, it also depends on your exact CPU and other hardware as well as what you want to run in it.
@foxy @alpinelinux @VoidLinux @debian
There is a way of doing the update manually iirc, they just don't package the Debian installer for x84-32 anymore
Debian is a free operating system (OS) for your computer. An operating system is the set of basic programs and utilities that make your computer run. Debian provides more than a pure OS: it comes with over 59000 packages, precompiled software bundled up in a nice format for easy installation on your machine.