It seems Canonical have done a bit of a U-turn on dropping 32bit support for Ubuntu, as many expected they would do. Their official statement is now out for those interested.
The most important part to be aware of is their new plan:
Thanks to the huge amount of feedback this weekend from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community, we will change our plan and build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.
We will put in place a community process to determine which 32-bit packages are needed to support legacy software, and can add to that list post-release if we miss something that is needed.
That's not the end of it though of course, eventually 32bit will be dropped which is inevitable really. Just not fully this time. Touching on this, they said in the post about using "container technology" to address "the ultimate end of life of 32-bit libraries" so hopefully by that time everything they need will be in place to make it super easy for users.
I'm glad Canonical have seen some sense on this, they clearly didn't communicate it well enough to begin with but they at least understand when they've made a big mistake like this and owning up to failures is part of what builds trust, so I'm happier now. Next time this happens, I just hope they give a very clear roadmap giving everyone proper time to prepare, which they didn't this time.
Their full statement is here. It will be interesting to see how Valve react, after announcing an end of Ubuntu support for Steam for Ubuntu 19.10 onwards.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Expalphalog Jun 24, 2019
Sad, very sad situation. It is well known that Canonical is not serious company, but such absurd situation also harmed Valve reputation (at least from Linux enthusiasts perspective).
It is oblivious that Canonical took this decision without consultation with Valve. It means - there is no agreement between Canonical-Valve. No agreement at all!!! Valve set Ubuntu as "recommended distribution" for game developers and Linux users WITHOUT any serious agreement with Canonical to protect their investment!
Last edited by danniello on 24 June 2019 at 5:39 pm UTC
It's all fine that they want to reach another solution some day. Just not this day.
BTW, what would have been the problem with Ubuntu Studio?
Quoting: GuestI can see why they want to remove 32 bit libs because it's a ton of work.But a ton of work for whom? They still get the majority of their packages directly from Debian, throwing a patch on one or the other package and just compile. If Debian still supports newer versions of 32 bit libraries, how much work is there really to be done for canonical?
They definitely had a stupid idea, but they're finally backtracking. Ubuntu is still by far the most popular Linux distro and the base of many distros created for common users that just want to "replace their Windows", so desire their destruction won't help at all to the Linux community.
Keep calm and keep gaming, folks.
In the long run, I guess a way has to be found to keep old 32bit software running, be it through emulation, VMs, containers or what have you. The way the software world evolves, I fear it will likely be in a browser :-(.
Quoting: EikeBTW, what would have been the problem with Ubuntu Studio?Many VST-plugins for use with DAWs are only usable running on Wine.
Quoting: TobiSGDMany VST-plugins for use with DAWs are only usable running on Wine.
Oops! I thought from the name it would be an IDE (like Visual Studio). Thanks!
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