I am glad to see others posting with knowledge.
My actual hard metal, spinning rust Sparkies are all 32 bit, which of course are not going to be supported. I will keep them as Sparky until I don't. A year? more, - will see how it handles the flood after Buster goes stable. 10 year old hardware can also go #! quickly also. The .config for the terminals, and other things in Spaky is really spot on, the right amount of flexibility. etc.
I will still comment occasionally reply , systemctl, journalctl, dpkg-reconfigure tzdata, etc. But I won't spend 1/2 a day trying to get BSPWm up on Sparky and find that I3 goes on in 15 minutes. etc. I won't go searching for the things that should have already been searched. But doing less. But as they say "less is more".
So - I went with Stretch in 2016 for a year while it was still in testing for my main computer. And I am moving to Buster as I type. I might try out the new 64 bit Sparkies in virtual and kick the tires of 6.x
Sigh, I can't believe Debian still does not automatically set etc/systemd/jounrnald.conf for "Storage=persistent" instead of the automatic. You have to mkdir for automatic. Done. My 2 main pieces if advice - install inxi and remember "inxi -Fxx" and set to automatic to enable journaling in systemd journalctl-b -1 | grep blah is your friend in times of trouble.
peace out.
Hey paxmark. It's way to early to pack your bags and say good-bye. Sparky stable branch will continue to support 32 bit architecture.