Canonical have listed what 32bit packages they will continue to support through Ubuntu 20.04

Quoting: KimyrielleIn all honesty, 32 bit stuff DOES need to go at some point. I mean, for how long is Linux supposed to carry on that old baggage?

That Steam (which is one of the most important Linux applications there is, and is maintained by a multi-billion dollar business) STILL doesn't have a 64 bit client is quite frankly unforgivable.

I would really think they should agree on a reasonable grace period and then elbow people into finally updating their legacy 32 bit apps. If after that date, people still -really- insist on running decades-old software or even older hardware, they can still maintain and build these packages themselves. It's open source software, after all.

Couple of years longer then Windows if we want linux be widely used as desktop OS. You know, on windows there is still developed on Visual Studio 2019, which is partialy 32bit application? (main process is 32bit) Lots of 32 bit apps are still developed and no one have courage to change it, because transition can break too many thinks and cost milions in damages (medical software, accounting software). And there is one more think, lots of games, new 64bit games, uses 32bit luncher. If you want to run new game on linux, you still need run 32bit wine.


Last edited by Arten on 18 September 2019 at 6:10 am UTC

I moved from 11 years of Ubuntu to Manjaro, so I could have programs which Canonical has, over the years, decided to remove, because science.

All the software that Canonical:><: has removed from their repos is still available in the AUR. It's also faster than any Ubuntu flavor, running ~20% of the daemons that Ubuntu does, at boot, idle.

And you only need to install it once. After 11 years of installing new versions of Ubuntu, I've finally moved to a rolling release.

You don't get "RTFM" answers for your questions, unlike the rather arrogant Arch forums; it's pretty much like the Ubuntu Forums. Manjaro does test new programs from Arch, so no Win10-like breaking of a system after an update. Besides, it's easy to downgrade a problematic file.

It's as easy to install as Ubuntu, and it is as suitable for rank n00bz as for old hands.

HIGHLY recommended.

Quoting: slaapliedjeIt is similar because they wanted to ditch 32 bit outright until everyone threatened to stop using it

That is not true, do not believe online trolls or blog posts based on those. Granted the communication from Canonical could have been a lot better, but much of the controversy was based on misunderstandings or outright lies.

From the original announcement at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/intel-32bit-packages-on-ubuntu-from-19-10-onwards/11263/2

QuoteQ. Doesn’t Steam use 32 bit libraries? How can I play my games?

Steam itself bundles a runtime containing necessary 32-bit libraries required to run the Steam client. In addition each game installed via Steam may ship 32-bit libraries they require. We’re in discussions with Valve about the best way to provide support from 19.10 onwards.

It may be possible to run 32 bit only games inside a lxd container running a 32 bit version of 18.04 LTS. You can pass through the graphics card to the container and run your games from that 32bit environment.

Q. How can I run 32-bit Windows applications if 32-bit WINE isn’t available in the archive?

Try 64-bit WINE first. Many applications will “just work”. If not use similar strategies as for 32 bit games. That is use an 18.04 LTS based Virtual Machine or LXD container that has full access to multiarch 32-bit WINE and related libraries.

Q. I have a legacy proprietary 32-bit Linux application on my 64-bit installation. How can I continue running it.

Run an older release of Ubuntu which supports i386, such as 16.04 LTS or, preferably 18.04 LTS in a Virtual Machine or LXD container as above.

And if that is not enough look what Valve wrote: https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1640915206447625383/

QuoteThere's a lot more to the technical and non-technical reasons behind our concerns, but the bottom line is that we would have had to drop what we're doing and scramble to support the new scheme in time for 19.10. We weren't confident we could do that without passing some of the churn to our users, and it would not solve the problems for third-party software outside of Steam upon which many of our users rely.

So they did not like that, and I and many other did not either, but it still would have been possible to run steam and other 32bit programs.

Quoting: Redface

Quoting: slaapliedjeIt is similar because they wanted to ditch 32 bit outright until everyone threatened to stop using it

That is not true, do not believe online trolls or blog posts based on those. Granted the communication from Canonical could have been a lot better, but much of the controversy was based on misunderstandings or outright lies.

From the original announcement at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/intel-32bit-packages-on-ubuntu-from-19-10-onwards/11263/2

QuoteQ. Doesn’t Steam use 32 bit libraries? How can I play my games?

Steam itself bundles a runtime containing necessary 32-bit libraries required to run the Steam client. In addition each game installed via Steam may ship 32-bit libraries they require. We’re in discussions with Valve about the best way to provide support from 19.10 onwards.

It may be possible to run 32 bit only games inside a lxd container running a 32 bit version of 18.04 LTS. You can pass through the graphics card to the container and run your games from that 32bit environment.

Q. How can I run 32-bit Windows applications if 32-bit WINE isn’t available in the archive?

Try 64-bit WINE first. Many applications will “just work”. If not use similar strategies as for 32 bit games. That is use an 18.04 LTS based Virtual Machine or LXD container that has full access to multiarch 32-bit WINE and related libraries.

Q. I have a legacy proprietary 32-bit Linux application on my 64-bit installation. How can I continue running it.

Run an older release of Ubuntu which supports i386, such as 16.04 LTS or, preferably 18.04 LTS in a Virtual Machine or LXD container as above.

And if that is not enough look what Valve wrote: https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1640915206447625383/

QuoteThere's a lot more to the technical and non-technical reasons behind our concerns, but the bottom line is that we would have had to drop what we're doing and scramble to support the new scheme in time for 19.10. We weren't confident we could do that without passing some of the churn to our users, and it would not solve the problems for third-party software outside of Steam upon which many of our users rely.

So they did not like that, and I and many other did not either, but it still would have been possible to run steam and other 32bit programs.

It isn't that I believe online trolls, I still see their original post as 'just use snaps'. Because that's exactly what it says. It also says if you have 32bit hardware, sorry bro, move to something else or stick to 18.04 until it's EOL. Granted that's 5 more years, and yes you probably shouldn't be running 32bit hardware at this point, but looking at it from another point of view, they're not vulnerable to the whole speculative execution bullshit :P

Quoting: oldrocker99I moved from 11 years of Ubuntu to Manjaro, so I could have programs which Canonical has, over the years, decided to remove, because science.

All the software that Canonical:><: has removed from their repos is still available in the AUR. It's also faster than any Ubuntu flavor, running ~20% of the daemons that Ubuntu does, at boot, idle.

And you only need to install it once. After 11 years of installing new versions of Ubuntu, I've finally moved to a rolling release.

You don't get "RTFM" answers for your questions, unlike the rather arrogant Arch forums; it's pretty much like the Ubuntu Forums. Manjaro does test new programs from Arch, so no Win10-like breaking of a system after an update. Besides, it's easy to downgrade a problematic file.

It's as easy to install as Ubuntu, and it is as suitable for rank n00bz as for old hands.

HIGHLY recommended.

To be fair to the Arch forums, they do have REALLY good manuals. Probably the best I've seen for any distribution. Debian needs more volunteers to keep theirs up to date, where most of them still only cover distribution releases that are 3 or more older. Debian also has some highly unused forums. But then usually most people running Debian know what they're doing and only occasionally need some advice.

Ubuntu's forums were so good because it was the easy Debian for such a long time, and took off really well. I stopped using it once they started diverging from main Debian so much with upstart, then unity, and so on. I wanted to like it again when they dropped Unity and went back to the standard Gnome, but then they started this crap with snaps, and removing a bunch of things out of their repos, so I just go back to Debian that I've been using for a little more than 2 decades.