Update: Canonical are now saying 32bit libraries will be "frozen" and not entirely dropped.
Original article:
Things are starting to get messy, after Canonical announced the end of 32bit support from Ubuntu 19.10 onwards, Valve have now responded.
Speaking on Twitter, Valve dev Pierre-Loup Griffais said:
Ubuntu 19.10 and future releases will not be officially supported by Steam or recommended to our users. We will evaluate ways to minimize breakage for existing users, but will also switch our focus to a different distribution, currently TBD.
I'm starting to think we might see a sharp U-turn from Canonical, as this is something that would hit them quite hard. Either way, the damage has been done.
I can't say I am surprised by Valve's response here. Canonical pretty clearly didn't think it through enough on how it would affect the desktop. It certainly seems like Canonical also didn't speak to enough developers first.
Perhaps this will give Valve a renewed focus on SteamOS? Interestingly, Valve are now funding some work on KWin (part of KDE).
Looks like I shall be distro hopping very soon…
To journalists from other websites reading: This does not mean the end of Linux support, Ubuntu is just one distribution.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Not really a fan of the RedHat distros.
Perhaps this is the thing that makes Canonical re-evaluate their decision to drop 32-bit multilib support.
Last edited by dvd on 22 June 2019 at 5:33 am UTC
ElectricPrism Jun 22, 2019
It's not that 64-bit shouldn't overtake 32-bit in the app / game space, but in the library space it's not a sane solution.
As these problems come up and with developments in ARM, POWER9, RISC I am beginning to think that binary distros are not the way.
What I'm afraid of is what it will cost to switch to a source package manager distro -- I am under the impression that even Gentoo has some ideology and thinking in implementation form that is stuck in 2008.
It's a shame Ubuntu couldn't learn a lesson from Gobo Linux where they organize packages /Programs/X-Library/V.XX/[files] -- if Linux took a page from their book we would have never needed Snaps or Flatpaks because multiple dependency versions could co-exist, and on servers where security matters they could simply require the latest version or have a secure channel of approved versions completely mitigating the necessity of LTS and having the best of Rolling Release and Point Release stability and freshness all while eliminating the necessity to over-engineer solutions that never should have needed to exist to begin with.
Last edited by ElectricPrism on 22 June 2019 at 6:01 am UTC
Hey Ubuntu, you know why Apple is popular? Yeah its not because they're dropping 32-bit. Its also not because they're dropping OpenGL. Do you think imitating all the BAD stuff Apple does is going to make Ubuntu better?
rustybroomhandle Jun 22, 2019
Quoting: gojulSteamOS being Debian-based, recommending Debian or Mint/Debian would make a lot of sense. But it is true that Debian is not for beginners.
Agreed. Pure Debian is tricky to install, configure and maintain (compared to Ubuntu).
Perhaps Mint-Debian then...
Who knows.....
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