[RFC PATCH 3/3] docs/about/deprecated: Deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary

[Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>]

Aside from not supporting KVM on 32-bit hosts, the qemu-system-x86_64
binary is a proper superset of the qemu-system-i386 binary. And with
the 32-bit x86 host support being deprecated now, it is possible to
deprecate the qemu-system-i386 binary now, too.

With regards to 32-bit KVM support in the x86 Linux kernel,
the developers confirmed that they do not need a recent
qemu-system-i386 binary here:

 https://lore.kernel.org/kvm/Y%2ffkTs5ajFy0hP1U@google.com/

Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
---
 docs/about/deprecated.rst | 16 ++++++++++++++++
 1 file changed, 16 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/about/deprecated.rst b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
index 1ca9dc33d6..c205816c7d 100644
--- a/docs/about/deprecated.rst
+++ b/docs/about/deprecated.rst
@@ -34,6 +34,22 @@ deprecating the build option and no longer defend it in CI. The
 ``--enable-gcov`` build option remains for analysis test case
 coverage.
 
+``qemu-system-i386`` binary (since 8.1)
+'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
+
+The ``qemu-system-i386`` binary was mainly useful for running with KVM
+on 32-bit x86 hosts, but most Linux distributions already removed their
+support for 32-bit x86 kernels, so hardly anybody still needs this. The
+``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary is a proper superset and can be used to
+run 32-bit guests by selecting a 32-bit CPU model, including KVM support
+on x86_64 hosts. Thus users are recommended to reconfigure their systems
+to use the ``qemu-system-x86_64`` binary instead. If a 32-bit CPU guest
+environment should be enforced, you can switch off the "long mode" CPU
+flag with ``-cpu max,lm=off``, or rename/symlink ``qemu-system-x86_64``
+to ``qemu-system-i386`` -- QEMU will then run with the 64-bit extensions
+disabled.
+
+
 System emulator command line arguments
 --------------------------------------
 
-- 
2.31.1