Natural Selection 2 is finally taking steps towards 64bit with a new patch

Quoting: cue58It does count though. Not supporting Linux because its market share is too low has always been a valid reason. The only thing I blame is occasional ignorance on some issues, and mostly I blame gamers themselves for not caring more about their computing environment enough to realize how absolutely garbage windows is.

Please give this man a cookie. Exactly what I'm thinking but we cannot blame the users aswell, Linux is not promoted by any company and in every Tech-store that I go into I see big banners with Windows 10 title on them. I have never seen an Ubuntu title or Tux symbol or anything like that in these kinds of stores, since they have no profit of preinstalling Linux-based OS but they do have some % of installing Windows 10 on these machines.

I also once fell into an argument with a retailer that wanted to convince me how Windows 10's user experience is much better than with Linux-based OS and how easy it is. He didn't know that I've been using linux for 2 years and that after you jump through the first wall and get a bit familiar with Linux you just never wish to go back to Windows despite the lack of proprietary software support. They are just payed to do so and to trick users into thinking that Windows 10 is any good because Microsoft is investing a ton of money into Win10's promotion since it's been such a fail with the free-upgrade trick they wanted to do. As I can see in marketshare they are still not much successful despite all the promotion's efforts and the Windows 7 that is the best and most complete Windows version of all times still dominates the market by a huge percent, and someone who doesn't need Dx12 support has no reason to switch to windows 10. And they are not planning to probably aswell since they didn't use the free upgrade option so they won't be paying for it now... The only thing you get with Windows 10 over 7 is problems and restrictions, privacy issues, you loose the ability to control your computer at least to some extent and updates that can break your machine but cannot be disabled.

Let's just hope that we get at least so much marketshare that people will at least hear for alternative before giving up into using Windows 10, we (users) are ones who must promote Linux to the biggest extent possible because the proprietary companies and people who have profit from selling Win10 copies won't...

Quoting: cue58Who is fighting for us to switch to 32-bit though? As far as I know everyone still using 32-bit isn't really doing so by choice.

As e.g. debian still will support 32 bit CPUs for another few years, there are people who are fighting for this. Otherwise it would have been already ditched as discussed.

Quoting: cue58Not to mention that if we go by the numbers in that link the percentage of 32-bit Linux users among us is about 1000 times smaller than the percentage of Linux to Windows users.

The statistic page here isn't comparable. Not all visitors created an account, and not everybody who has an account has filled his profile with that info. So you don't know the numbers.
Have a look online, and you see a lot more people than the two here are still using a 32 bit OS.

But my point is not about 32 bit in general. As I said, it just reminds me to that situation. And as we (Linux users) with a small market share want to have more support, we shouldn't tell others who have a small share they shouldn't get support because of their small share.

OK this 32-bit argument is entirely fallacious. I really, really don't understand why people are still advocating 32-bit Linux for GAMES. There is an argument for 32-bit outside of this, but even then it should really only be for archival purposes. Quoting debian as having a 32-bit download "as reasons" is laughable. Of course they have to supply a 32-bit image, right until the end of 32-bit support. The 32-bit distro will be the last thing to be turned off. Games and other applications however, that's a different story.

Comparing 32-bit vs 64-bit with Windows vs Linux is a specious argument. 64 bit is an industry standard, not a choice.
A better comparison would be Microsoft Windows supporting Windows XP. Windows XP was a past industry standard that was no longer being supported and no longer secure, plus could no longer take advantage of software and hardware improvements. So Microsoft finally shut it down - no more updates (inc security ones) anymore. Users were told to upgrade.

If you are running 32-bit hardware, it's very likely you can't play Natural Selection 2 at all. Not in any meaningful way. As someone pointed out, this is hardware from 2006, that's 10 years old. You'll still be able to play some games though, just not the recent, modern ones that rely on the latest hardware.

32-bit makes more sense on Windows, although not in a good way. The Win32 api is so well established and the Windows application ecosystem is so large that it will take a very long time for them to transition to 64-bit. This is also the reason why many Windows devs make 32-bit ports for Linux, because they are stuck in that mindset. Under Linux though, we have very few standalone 32-bit apps, we pull all of our software from repositories where it's compiled for the right platform. We don't have ".exe" files that just run (although snappy and flatpak are coming, but lets hope they are mostly 64-bit). So we are not dependent on 32-bit otherwise so there's no reason to stay with it.

@Corben I like how you just casually dismiss those statistics. Of course they should be taken with a grain of salt. However if you can't see the trend you really are deceiving yourself.

32-bit versions of games are just generating more work for developers. We are already such a small minority, you are doing Linux gaming a disservice by running a 32-bit OS, unless you have old hardware, in which case, you have no right to complain about games being only 64-bit.


Last edited by drmoth on 19 September 2016 at 2:40 am UTC

Meh, looks like I can't explain my point properly :( Seems like I'm missing the correct verbal ability to make it clear.
My point isn't about 32 bit at all. It is about that somebody asked a question why not getting support, and then the answer is because (almost) no one isn't using it. Now the asking person (if he even belongs to that fraction) feels like: aww man, just because we are few, we don't get support?
And that is how some Linux users feel, when they get kind of the same answer when asking for a Linux port.

Of course the reason for dropping 32 bit support in particular has technical reasons. 32 bit is dying out. Even I don't have a 32 bit CPU anymore. So everything you say about why 32 bit isn't/shouldn't be supported anymore is correct and I agree with that. But there are still people using it and would like to have support for it. So they ask for it. Just wanted to point out, that giving the technical explanation as answer (which has also been given) in this case would be more plausible for them, than referring to a small share.
At least that's my opinion ;)


Last edited by Corben on 19 September 2016 at 6:35 am UTC

Looks like the performance has improved a lot since I gave up on it years ago.