As you might have heard by now, Canonical has made the decision to drop 32bit support from Ubuntu 19.10 onwards.
Writing on the mailing list, as well as this post on Ubuntu's Community Hub, Canonical gave a reminder that the decision isn't coming without warning. It was proposed last year and it was followed up with another post detailing a final decision to be made in the middle of 2019. So here we are, the decision seems to have been made.
The problem isn't hardware, as likely around 99% of people nowadays have a 64bit capable computer. Going by our own statistics, from what 2,254 users told us only 4 are using a 32bit Linux distribution. The issue then, is mainly software and libraries needed to actually run 32bit applications. This is where it sounds like there's going to be plenty of teething issues, with a number of people not too happy about the decision.
Steam, for example, is one such application along with plenty of 32bit games that will likely never get updated, although Canonical did say they're "in discussions" with Valve about it. There's also GOG, Humble Store and itch.io which all provide a number of direct-download 32bit games, which do not supply the required 32bit libraries to run. It doesn't sound like they have been given any thought (at least they haven't been mentioned).
Another of the major problems being Wine, with a discussion now happening on their mailing list. The discussion doesn't seem to be too positive, with developer Henri Verbeet even saying "I think not building packages for Ubuntu 19.10 would be the only practical option.", although Andrew Eikum's idea of using the Steam Runtime could be an interesting way around it.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
For now I am going to recommend Manjaro (rolling) and LMDE (LTS)
I think VALVE should create a desktop distro based on ARCH for a rolling release and/or one based on DEBIAN (LTS) to run alongside SteamOS
Just as Linux was reaching a tipping point we have had numerous hits to the face starting with EPIC games and its been downhill from there. I am beginning to think that Microsoft is involved here. Isn't it coincidental that as soon as Steamplay/Proton hits the ground running Canonical decide to drop 32bit breaking 80+% of software on Linux and also work with Microsoft to create WSL allowing Linux programs to run under Windows.
This not only cripples VALVE but Wine and Proton also.
Thoughts?
Projectile Vomit Jun 21, 2019
Ubuntu, though... So many cool distros out there. I no longer see Ubuntu any different than Apple or Microsoft, anymore.
https://appletoolbox.com/2019/06/macos-catalina-and-your-32-bit-apps
Quoting: finaldest...Canonical decide to drop 32bit breaking 80+% of software on Linux...
Thoughts?
Thoughts? That you are slightly exaggerating? Apart from my (Steam-)games all my applications are 64bit anyway and my 4 Wine applications seem to work perfectly ok with wine64. If you count every game in my Steam library the percentage goes up considerably, but I suppose Steam might be just fine - after all Valve has shipped their own runtime environment for ages.
wvstolzing Jun 21, 2019
Quoting: GuestI personally do not think what does Apple is very relevant to Linux. And they have a long tradition of screwing their customers and trade partners.
I agree with this -- in the past few years Apple has perfected gratuitous obsolescence to an art form. About Canonical, though, the following comes to mind. It smacks of a conspiracy theory of course, but Canonical screwing over desktop users like this could well be the prelude to their acquisition by M$.
Last edited by wvstolzing on 21 June 2019 at 2:24 pm UTC
Quoting: Tuxee... and my 4 Wine applications seem to work perfectly ok with wine64.
That doesn't mean they aren't 32 bit and use 32 bit libraries.
Quoting: EikeQuoting: no_information_hereEdit: Just checking and it looks like most of those work fine. Hmm. Does anyone have any comments on the KDE Debian spin?
Running Debian with KDE for, dunno, two decades? Sure worth a try.
KDE on Stretch was broken due to a massive memory leak in ksmserver they never fixed. Now Buster is much more stable on KDE.
Quoting: ShmerlDidn't Valve select Debian for SteamOS? So Valve would simply swap Ubuntu with Debian as most recommended target. Quite natural to expect that.
They did this because Canonical has a shitty license policy.
Quoting: EhvisQuoting: Tuxee... and my 4 Wine applications seem to work perfectly ok with wine64.
That doesn't mean they aren't 32 bit and use 32 bit libraries.
Navicat provides specific 32 bit and 64 bit downloads. Even if not - not everything is doom and gloom:
https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2019-June/147898.html (Andrew Eikum of Codeweavers)
QuoteIf they don't, then I have a suggestion for our packages: use the
Steam runtime. I see a lot of upsides: They've already solved this
problem; we don't need to re-invent this wheel. Ubuntu is already
working with them to support the use-case. The project is open-source,
well-funded, and has a clear motivation to continue being updated and
functional for the long-term. And people are already building and
running Wine in the runtime today.
We would need to build a couple more packages than we do now, but not
many. Based on the Proton build system, I think we would need to
build bison, FAudio, gstreamer (and all of its dependencies, notably
glib2), and vkd3d. Build those against the runtime, package and ship
the runtime itself, and I think we should be in good shape without
having to build and maintain a bunch of 32-bit packages ourselves.
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