Canonical have released a statement on Ubuntu and 32bit support, will keep select packages

Quoting: EikeWell, actually "immature" and "world was ending" were part of your statement, too.

I take it that you don't frequent Phoronix and Slashdot much. If so then don't let the curiosity get the better of you, it's not pretty.


Last edited by F.Ultra on 24 June 2019 at 7:07 pm UTC

Quoting: OdisejCanonical is struggling and apparently needs some help either in people getting involved or in donations.

I was actually thinking about that. I used to spend some considerable money on S.u.S.E. Linux in the past (which was still cheaper than downloading and burning CDs myself). Then came broadband and Debian and later Ubuntu, but I never really considered giving back (even though I can afford it much more easily nowadays than 20 years ago).

If we value open source and the freedom that comes with it, it gotta be worth something to us ...

That's not perfect, but much better.

I think they should try to team up with devs of other distros like Mint and so on. Then they can do the work together and support all i386 libs until a good working container (or whatever) solution is found.

May that not be enough, they could do some crowdfunding or so, to buy ressources do to help doing the job.

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: GuestI have no idea how you formed this opinion of Canonical.

Slowly, during the years. I follow their mailing lists for more than a decade now. I've witnessed their transformation.

Quoting: GuestI can see why they want to remove 32 bit libs because it's a ton of work. They obviously didn't think it through, figured out the impact and are trying to rectify it. What else do you want them to do that they are not doing?

No, they are not trying to rectify it. They are trying to do damage control for that backwards decision. And they are clear in that they are still going to abandon 32 bits.

I can not trust a distro which will have an undetermined process to decide which apps are worthy or not to continue with 32-bit support. What if they drop support exactly for that application I need to use? So it's either all of them, or I'm out. So, I'm out.

What 32bit apps from the distribution apart from 32bit wine and steam will you need? It will mostly be some libraries for programs outside of the repositories and they stated that it will be community determined which packages to build in 32 bit and that new ones also can be added after release.

If you find a package download the source package and build it, its only a few commands. Then wishlist it and tell your own build works, or that it doesnt and file a bugreport.

Edit: with downloading the source I mean the source deb, not unpackaged from upstream. The different architectures are build from the same source package, so that will be available, whether Ubuntu already ships the 32bit package or not.


Last edited by Redface on 24 June 2019 at 8:00 pm UTC

Quoting: F.UltraNo I didn't say that others did such stuff all the time. What I said was that in the real world companies announce their plans, then they await comments from users and partners to see how said plans will be received after which the plans are either amended or put into production.

The problem here is that the Linux fanbase decided to see the announcement of plans as a foregone conclusion and then run around screaming.

When they "announced" this years ago, did they set a date? Was it fully decided and plotted out? How much did they broadcast their intentions so that people could prepare their transition?

Or was their announcement now still just a "plan" to be discussed, despite the fact the changes takes effect in a few months?

Everyone was surprised by this because information was not communicated clearly enough and in advance enough. Yeah, we are probably overstating the impact... but this a panic Canonical created.

Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: F.UltraNo I didn't say that others did such stuff all the time. What I said was that in the real world companies announce their plans, then they await comments from users and partners to see how said plans will be received after which the plans are either amended or put into production.

The problem here is that the Linux fanbase decided to see the announcement of plans as a foregone conclusion and then run around screaming.

When they "announced" this years ago, did they set a date? Was it fully decided and plotted out? How much did they broadcast their intentions so that people could prepare their transition?

Or was their announcement now still just a "plan" to be discussed, despite the fact the changes takes effect in a few months?

Everyone was surprised by this because information was not communicated clearly enough and in advance enough. Yeah, we are probably overstating the impact... but this a panic Canonical created.

That was the point I made before. There was no roadmap or prior warning, just discussions about possible plans and then BAM you have around four or five months to prepare. That's just not how such a massive thing should be communicated.

Quoting: ShmerlI'd classify it as too little, too late. Trust is pretty much gone. And I doubt anyone would recommend Ubuntu for gaming after this.

Too little would be too just continue to build the whole distribution in 32 bit. Now the actual needed libraries and programs will be identified so that better future proof solutions.
Or to continue with their plans as announced where there was way to many problems and to little time for the 19.10 and 20.04 release.

My trust in them increased by their new plan.

Quoting: eldakingWell, this was announced faster than I thought, but is exactly what I expected: 19.10 will make the change, but for 20.04 they will revert to the "consolidated" system.

That is not how I understand it. They are writing:

QuoteThanks 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.

So they change it in 19.10 and continue forward with at least 20.04 with the select packages build for 32bit.
That is how they do major distribution wide changes, they roll out before the LTS, and may be reverted for the LTS. Like for example having Wayland as default in 17.10 where 18.04 switched back to xorg as default.

Since the also have a process to add more packages after release I see no reason they would reverse this for 20.04

Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: F.UltraNo I didn't say that others did such stuff all the time. What I said was that in the real world companies announce their plans, then they await comments from users and partners to see how said plans will be received after which the plans are either amended or put into production.

The problem here is that the Linux fanbase decided to see the announcement of plans as a foregone conclusion and then run around screaming.

When they "announced" this years ago, did they set a date? Was it fully decided and plotted out? How much did they broadcast their intentions so that people could prepare their transition?

Or was their announcement now still just a "plan" to be discussed, despite the fact the changes takes effect in a few months?

Everyone was surprised by this because information was not communicated clearly enough and in advance enough. Yeah, we are probably overstating the impact... but this a panic Canonical created.

Here is the initial announcement from last year: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2018-May/040310.html so it was just one year ago and not years as I first claimed (shame on me there).

edit: further research shows that they also made an announcement back in 2016: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2016-June/039420.html


Last edited by F.Ultra on 24 June 2019 at 7:57 pm UTC

Takes some courage to change ones chosen and declared trajectory to adjust to needs of others.
Well done and thanks you! to the Ubuntu team.
In the end this may actually turn out beneficial in creating the tools to deal with legacy software in the future.