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.
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The comments on this article are closed.
Quoting: GustyGhostThe problem is not 100% Canonical's decision. Consider also Valve's failure to build Steam for amd64, and the games industry (in general).
Yes, it is.
Even if Valve will finally ship the 64bit client they'll still have to include the 32bit steam APIs and runtime, because old games exist and they won't be ported to 64 bit.
Porting 10+ year old games to 64bit just isn't going to happen.
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Quoting: scaineFor the third(?) time: Canonical have been talking about this for about 2 years. Can't say that I'm amazingly pleased about how it's been communicated, but at least lets get the facts straight, eh?Yes, true, but it reminds me of Gnome's decision to eliminate the desktop OS icon tray. Just because they think it's a great idea, and just because they've been communicating it was coming for a long time, doesn't mean the entirety of the rest of the ecosystem can or will bend to that decision. Even if it's something they were long considering doesn't mean they had to do it.
Last edited by iiari on 22 June 2019 at 3:23 pm UTC
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I was really hoping canonical was going to give me the 64-bit steam client of my dreams. I don't play any 32-bit games so steam is the only reason I even need it enabled on my distro. I'm personally disappointed, 32-bit needs to go. It's annoying having to have 2 separate versions of every library so I can run 32-bit software. I'm also a bigger fan of GTK/Gnome so I'm a bit disappointed they chose kwin to contribute to instead of something like mutter but oh well. It's nice to see them continuing to better the Linux space even if it's a project I'll never use.
Last edited by Scoopta on 22 June 2019 at 3:36 pm UTC
Last edited by Scoopta on 22 June 2019 at 3:36 pm UTC
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slaapliedje Jun 22, 2019
Quoting: gojulI will personally help anyone who wants help switching to Debian. I've been using it for close to two decades.Quoting: ThormackQuoting: 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.....
Installing Debian is tricky for newbies. Maintaining it is not harder than Ubuntu provided you're using stable.
Looks like Valve may not use a Debian-based distro : https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/155794864305471497/591834042437992448/Screenshot_20190622_053640.png
It's true that from a packager perspective RedHat tools are much more handy than Debian tools.
Redhat/CentOS is iffy for Desktop use, outside if you're using it as a workstation. Fedora (in my experience) isn't stable enough, with a constant change in their package versions even within their own release.
Debian is great because they do a very stable release every year or so, only release when they're damn sure it's ready. And upgrades from one release to the next are very smooth. And with Backports, and steam already being packaged for it, it's a complete win!
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Quoting: ScooptaI don't play any 32-bit games so steam is the only reason I even need it enabled on my distro.
Do you check this before buying a game? How?
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Quoting: EikeNo I don't, I wish there was a way...maybe there is but I don't know it. I just don't buy games very often and everything I play in my library is 64-bit. I guess in theory you could buy, check, and refund but that's inconvenient. I just got lucky that I don't really play any 32-bit games at this point. In my experience 32-bit is mostly source 1 games and indie games that don't use Unity. Almost everything else(outside of proton) is 64-bit in my experience. Of course I'm just a sample size of one. Might be that the games I play I just get lucky with.Quoting: ScooptaI don't play any 32-bit games so steam is the only reason I even need it enabled on my distro.
Do you check this before buying a game? How?
Last edited by Scoopta on 22 June 2019 at 3:49 pm UTC
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Quoting: ScooptaNo I don't, I wish there was a way...maybe there is but I don't know it.
I wonder if SteamDB might have this available somehow. Don't know.
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Quoting: EikeYeah, I was wondering the same thing. Some games are easy to tell based on their files. For example Unity games. There are a very rare few that are 32-bit only. The executable for unity games end with .x86 for 32-bit and .x86_64 for 64-bit. If there's only one executable and it's .x86 then you know it's only 32-bit. But that only works for unity games which are mostly 64-bit anyway, most actually come with both so they work everywhere.Quoting: ScooptaNo I don't, I wish there was a way...maybe there is but I don't know it.
I wonder if SteamDB might have this available somehow. Don't know.
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Quoting: GuestWhat annoys me personally is i will of course drop ubuntu but some non FOSS stuff i use is supported on Ubuntu only. Or poorly supported on other distros.Seriously? Apps that don't have good support on, say, the Arch AUR as well? What titles?
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