Debian Stretch is EOL, which was the last to support the armel architecture (arm ~v5 soft float). Everything seems to have gone to armhf (hardware float) or aarch64.
Are there any modern distributions as a viable replacement for Debian that support armel out of the box?
(This is for Lego ev3dev since the Lego EV3 runs armel).
Best Answer
I'm not closely familiar with Linux distributions and features/options you need. But Devuan GNU+Linux (a fork of Debian without systemd, lastest version Chimaera 4.0 is based on Debian Bullseye 11.1) seems to be available for armel architecture.
Just pointing to these two big difference will somewhat change your behaviour in doing task.
For example you could easily install a package on Ubuntu using apt but not so simple when using rpm. Having a difference in Window Manager can also change how you interact with the system.
Best Answer
I'm not closely familiar with Linux distributions and features/options you need. But Devuan GNU+Linux (a fork of Debian without systemd, lastest version Chimaera 4.0 is based on Debian Bullseye 11.1) seems to be available for armel architecture.
Download and see details on their site: https://www.devuan.org/