Re: Netbooks
Well, most netbooks still in use sport 64 bit processors. A lot of Atom processors are 64 bit (including most of those placed in netbooks, especially since 2010).
In my experience, the netbooks that don't have 64 bit processors don't run that well with Ubuntu based distributions anyway (even Lubuntu and Bodhi seem a bit heavy for them). The ones that I have are running Debian. Other 32 bit machines I have access to all run Debian, Slackware, or Salix rather than an Ubuntu variant.
So, is it time for Linux to start phasing out 32 bit x86 processors? No. Is it time for Ubuntu to start phasing them out? Perhaps.