As an update to the situation around Canonical planning to drop 32bit support (and Valve saying bye-bye to Ubuntu 19.10+ support), apparently they're not. Instead, the 32bit libraries will be frozen. Are you confused yet? I sure am.
Canonical's Steve Langasek has attempted to clarify the situation. Here's what they said:
I’m sorry that we’ve given anyone the impression that we are “dropping support for i386 applications”. That’s simply not the case. What we are dropping is updates to the i386 libraries, which will be frozen at the 18.04 LTS versions. But there is every intention to ensure that there is a clear story for how i386 applications (including games) can be run on versions of Ubuntu later than 19.10.
That's at least a little better, isn't it? They also said a little further:
[…] since the vast majority of i386-only software is also legacy (closed-source, will never be rebuilt), it also does not generally benefit from newer libraries […]
There's a pretty big difference from not being "included as an architecture", to having them available but frozen and still possible to use, isn't there? It's confusing, since that's not how it was originally explained. This is something that should have been said very clearly from the start.
Perhaps this might not be the epic disaster many people (myself included) thought it might turn out to be. We still have to wait and see how exactly they implement all this, and how it will affect gaming.
There's still going to be confusion and issues though, like upgrading drivers. Touching on that, Langasek said:
32-bit mesa will be available in the Ubuntu 18.04 repository. Note that mesa already gets updates in 18.04 which track the versions from later Ubuntu releases, as part of hardware enablement. If incompatibilities are introduced beyond 20.04 (which is the cutoff for hardware enablement backports for 18.04), we will need to address them on a case-by-case basis.
So it sounds like you're still going to be stuck in some ways. Seems like the proposal is still no good for Wine either (and so Steam Play too).
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Draconicrose Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: subQuoting: liamdaweSounds like Wine still won't work: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/i386-architecture-will-be-dropped-starting-with-eoan-ubuntu-19-10/11263/121?u=liamdawe
Good read, Liam.
How can the pros at Canonical miss THIS?
Shouldn't they know about the rough design and dependencies of one of their most prominent software packages?
I mean, dropping Wine isn't something they'd consider a good move for sure.
*facepalm*
They didn't miss it
They dont care
Gamers are not their customers. Thus their needs are moot. They don't care if Wine doesn't run. They don't care if steam doesn't run (though functionally steam could easily get a 64-bit client out, it woudl just mean extra filtering of games that aren't compiled for 64-bit being filtered on the library side, oh and Proton basically not working anymore. But Valve can get a working 64-bit client that works with 64-bit compiled Linux games)
They know the problem. They just don't care.
Quoting: Luke_NukemI just purged all *386 libs from my install, including Steam. Then installed Steam via flatpak...
No. Issues. At. All.
But this doesn't solve HumbleBumble or GOG. Though I do seem to recall and automated GOG->flatpak creator?
Note steam comes with its own libs so its going to work regardless
Thatissn't the problem. you can duct tape and bubble gum steam to work. Steam can easily get a 64-bit client if they really wanted, since they already have one for Macs.
Getting the steam client to run isnt the problem
its all the downstream games that wont work that aren't complied for 64-bit. This will cause confusion when you see a game in your library, install it, and the game implodes on you. While game B somehow works. But Game C doesn't? And neither does Game D. Oh yeah and Proton also no lnoger works, so why does the steam client list those. Now you have a UI/UX nightmare, that applies to a SINGLE distro only.
SO you could
1) make all these bizarre exceptions in the UI/UX for one distro
2) abandon the distro as unsupported and go to literally any other distro where this problem doesnt exist
Ubuntu isn't Apple or Microsoft. They don't have the clout to force developers to 'make things their way'. There are a plethora of equivalent options available and there's no incentive to hack together a broken experience, when you can just dump them and tell your users to use literally any other distro on the planet and everything on steam will work.
GOG has its own problems where they techncally have Linux games, but their main push on the client side Galaxy hasn't had a Linux option in 4 years and 2.0 doesnt seem to be addressing this either. Epic also has no Linux client for users who have games on Epic that have Linux version on STeam. Say what you will about Steam, but Steam is the only one actually serious about gaming on Linux and putting money where their mouth is via Vulkan, Wine/Proton, and now KDE.
Last edited by Satoru on 24 June 2019 at 3:01 am UTC
Nevertheless Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: Luke_NukemI just purged all *386 libs from my install, including Steam. Then installed Steam via flatpak...
No. Issues. At. All.
But this doesn't solve HumbleBumble or GOG. Though I do seem to recall and automated GOG->flatpak creator?
Look here ->
https://twitter.com/jjardon/status/1143032412361773056?s=20
Quoting: NeverthelessSo, how you can install games to non-system drive? As i recall, flatpak Steam is isolated from the rest of OS. You cannot go out of flatpak's file system.Quoting: x_wingQuoting: Luke_NukemI just purged all *386 libs from my install, including Steam. Then installed Steam via flatpak...
No. Issues. At. All.
But this doesn't solve HumbleBumble or GOG. Though I do seem to recall and automated GOG->flatpak creator?
And what about proton games? Do they work without problems?
I have no problems at all.
EDIT: Without changing location of Steam, of course. For example leave Steam (and some games) on SSD and keep rest of them on two separate HDD drives.
Last edited by Gryxx on 24 June 2019 at 6:15 am UTC
Quoting: GryxxSo, how you can install games to non-system drive? As i recall, flatpak Steam is isolated from the rest of OS. You cannot go out of flatpak's file system.You can configure the sandbox (I don't think there is a GUI, yet): Flatpak Sandbox Permissions
You can put your Flatpaks anywhere you want, too: Flatpak installation
Tweets by Canonical/Ubuntu accounts with gaming filters (and a Microsoft one)
I'm with Valve. They have done alot for gaming on linux as of late that I have faith in them. Here is a fun fact: when I went to install Dota Underlords on my phone, they had even included APK download options!
Quoting: x_wingAnd what about proton games? Do they work without problems?
I've been using Flatpaked Steam on OpenSUSE Leap for over a year and it's great. No issues - no matter it is proton or native app. The only nitpick I had was when I couldn't get Nvidia runtime for the driver version I've had - but it was like 2 days before Flathub repos caught up (but usually they update nvidia libs before I see those in OpenSUSE repos).
Schattenspiegel Jun 24, 2019
Last edited by Schattenspiegel on 24 June 2019 at 8:18 am UTC
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