Valve looking to drop support for Ubuntu 19.10 and up due to Canonical's 32bit decision (updated)

Either way I'm sure we'll still have both Steam and Proton going forward, Valve has shown their interest in linux since the very start. I played the first Counter Strike on linux, about 20 years ago.

I do understand Valve's decision here, though. They need 32 bit support because of their immense game library on Steam, and I get why they don't want to offer official support for any OS ditching 32 bit.

Still. Will follow this one, want to see what happens here. I'm sure we'll be fine and we'll still have a working steam, I've been on Arch Linux which isn't supported all this time and it's been working great for me. But still interested in where this will lead.

Interesting twitter replies right now from OpenSUSE Chairman Richard Brown to Pierre-Loup Griffais from Valve, pitching a cooperation between Valve and OpenSUSE.

https://mobile.twitter.com/sysrich/status/1142363021605580801

Quoting: MicromegasInteresting twitter replies right now from OpenSUSE Chairman Richard Brown to Pierre-Loup Griffais from Valve, pitching a cooperation between Valve and OpenSUSE.

https://mobile.twitter.com/sysrich/status/1142363021605580801

one of the few distros i have no experience with, but the idea of a tumbleweed with almost-support from steam sounds nice for probably not a few gamers. hmm.. :3 this is so interesting

edit: and i've gotta add, after all of the effort cannonical has put into things they only scrap after they're 90% working, this attempt to save effort is... one i would not believe a word of if this was april 1st. i'm uhh... just sayin, what entertainment.


Last edited by doomiebaby on 22 June 2019 at 10:10 am UTC

My, how events have escalated (and somewhat predicted by me in my earlier comment on the other post). Well, I hope that Ubuntu management back-pedal their decision after this community backlash.

If they don't, then I have a proposal regarding Debian, SteamOS and those type of things:

Most of the reasons that new people jumped on Ubuntu was ease of installation and newer software than regular Debian. However, if you use Debian 'testing' as a basis for an up-to-date and beginner-friendly Linux, and work on a clean, easy-to-use installer but retain all of the usual Debian software and package management behind the scenes.

I guess Mint Linux is a bit like that, but Mint seems to strike out a bit and do their own thing. I'm talking about staying very true to the Debian back-end (basically, identical to Debian) but just put user-friendly installer front-end and more-sensible default config onto it. I'd possibly call it Debian: Gamer's Edition or Debian: Beginner's Edition or just rename it completely, but ensure it is Debian under the hood.

--

I hope this damage to the Linux ecosystem can be averted, by sensible decisions and good communication, from this point onwards.

IMO this move by canonical is long overdue. I was surprised to see such negatives reactions about it.

If support for 32bit libs had been ended a while ago, we wouldn't be in this situation today.
The easy availability of 32bit libraries is pushing app developers to distribute 32bit executables, which needs to stop.

On the other hand, steam could ship with the whole 32bit runtime, as needed, and it would make for less breakage (see flatpak).

But I agree that this could have been handled a bit more gradually. First deprecate it and print a warning when opening/installing an application for the first time. Then move multilib packages to a disabled-by-defaut source. Then to a PPA. Then remove it.

Quoting: MicromegasInteresting twitter replies right now from OpenSUSE Chairman Richard Brown to Pierre-Loup Griffais from Valve, pitching a cooperation between Valve and OpenSUSE.

https://mobile.twitter.com/sysrich/status/1142363021605580801

This would be full circle for me as Suse was my first foray into Linux 20yrs ago :)

Quoting: ThormackIf it happens, I hope they choose Debian as the new default supported distro.

Not really a fan of the RedHat distros.

Absolute fan of Fedora and Arch.
So for Steam/Valve I'd love to see them opting for Fedora.

guys! this just in - microsoft is buying canonical and adding win32 support, mhmahahaha. alright i'll stop posting. .w.

Ubuntu as a desktop choice for a lot of users was so rooted in Steam's support of it, that if Valve decided to make SteamOS into a desktop focused all purpose distro, some might even start running that as a main desktop.

Will the Proton/Steamplay be cancelled next ? and just back to basics i guess...we'll see.