Debian 11 "bullseye" is officially out now

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: RedfaceI mentioned in this thread that Lutris is in 21.04, and it will be available in 21.10 when it releases too.
This is an important and in my opinion good way that Ubuntu is based on Debian. If you want a new package in Ubuntu you have to get it into Debian first. Its not only to not duplicate work but also to keep Ubuntu close to Debian.

I have already gone into that they do not build packages to have _ubuntu_ in them. The version of Lutris in 21.10 has no ubuntu in it for example: https://packages.ubuntu.com/hirsute/lutris
And while packaging is an important part to create a distribution, its not all, like for example building is important, where I have posted some links already, and we have not got into supporting multiple releases.

If that basically was no work the Popos and Mint for example would probably not rely on Ubuntu repositories for the bulk of their packages.

And I do have a lot of respect of Debian, it was in fact the first Linux distribution I installed on my Amiga in the 90ies.

What happens when Ubuntu stops listening to fans at all, and just drops 32bit support completely, like they wanted to? Wonder how many people will leave for another Distro.

Predicting the future is hard, but we can look at the past.

They never wanted to drop 32bit completely, see the announcement for dropping the i386 architecture
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-announce/2019-June/001261.html

QuoteWhile this means we will not provide 32-bit builds of new upstream versions
of libraries, there are a number of ways that 32-bit applications can
continue to be made available to users of later Ubuntu releases, as detailed
in [4]. We will be working to polish the 32-bit support story over the
course of the 19.10 development cycle. To follow the evolution of this
support, you can participate in the discourse thread at [5].

The controversy was not about that it would be impossible to run 32 bit programs, but that the way it apparently would be done, would both put to much on other developers like Valve and Wine, but also users.

See for example from Valve https://steamcommunity.com/app/221410/discussions/0/1640915206447625383/

QuoteTo provide some background, support for 32-bit libraries is required in order to run not only the Steam client, but also the thousands of games available on Steam that only support 32-bit environments. Enabling the Steam client to run in pure 64-bit environments, while feasible, would leave the vast majority of the current Steam library inaccessible to such users without an additional compatibility layer.

Ubuntu wrote about additional compatibility layers, see above, and Valve then continues to write about their own.

QuoteTo that effect, Steam already bundles a lot of the dependencies needed by 32-bit games, but it currently relies on some key components being available on the host system: a 32-bit glibc, ELF loader, Mesa and NVIDIA graphics driver libraries, to name a few. We've been investigating ways to avoid these system dependencies for a while now, by looking into light containerization and other approaches. The announced change by Ubuntu would have required us to fully complete such a system in the 19.10 release time frame, as it would be required there to maintain functionality without requiring users to reinstall Steam through another method.

And one of the Wine developers: https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2019-June/147898.html

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.

And I did not like it either as a user, but I also hated that whole lot of misinformation being spread then. One of my comments to one of the threads on GOL: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2019/06/canonical-are-now-saying-ubuntus-32bit-is-not-being-entirely-dropped-32bit-libraries-will-be-frozen/comment_id=157675

QuoteThat is not backing out, it is a clarification of their plans. They never said that 32 bit programs would not be able tun run any more. A lot of us are worried that the new ways will be Inferior to what we have today, especially in regard to how complicated it will be for users. And I still are.

A lot of online publication and posters claimed that it would be impossible, but this is Linux not Mac or Windows so there will always be ways for users to do what they want differently than their distribution providers. Do not believe everything you read.

But distributions are about convenience, after all we could all do a Linux from scratch installation and not use any distribution after all. So if they make it a lot harder for users we should go elsewhere.

P.S I did split my answers up in three because I got some error about a security token when posting all in one, but that could have been that I took a long time to write it too.

Quoting: Redface

Quoting: slaapliedje

Quoting: RedfaceI mentioned in this thread that Lutris is in 21.04, and it will be available in 21.10 when it releases too.
This is an important and in my opinion good way that Ubuntu is based on Debian. If you want a new package in Ubuntu you have to get it into Debian first. Its not only to not duplicate work but also to keep Ubuntu close to Debian.

I have already gone into that they do not build packages to have _ubuntu_ in them. The version of Lutris in 21.10 has no ubuntu in it for example: https://packages.ubuntu.com/hirsute/lutris
And while packaging is an important part to create a distribution, its not all, like for example building is important, where I have posted some links already, and we have not got into supporting multiple releases.

If that basically was no work the Popos and Mint for example would probably not rely on Ubuntu repositories for the bulk of their packages.

And I do have a lot of respect of Debian, it was in fact the first Linux distribution I installed on my Amiga in the 90ies.

They still need to pull upstream packages from Debian as Debian has tons of volunteers and some paid developers. So even if they pull the source with debian patches, then patch their own stuff, they'd still go away if Debian did.

They do not need to pull upstream packages from Debian, its a choice, which prevents some duplicate work in creating the packages, and a way to get a overlap of the Debian and Ubuntu developers.
Without having the packages in sid as well new versions can be maintained in the Ubuntu repositories. Some of the community maintained packages might be dropped, or only available as a snap, but there are still enough packages in main to have a full distribution.

And new source packages are also not needed for the already released distributions, except for the rolling parts like the kernel, firefox and nvidia drivers, but those are updated independent of Debian all the time anyway.

I do not want to repeat all arguments again, and you also wrote that you did not think Ubuntu would go away in a previous post here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/08/debian-11-qbullseyeq-is-officially-out-now/comment_id=209242

Once you have a Debian source package you also do not have to start from scratch for a new upstream release.

I'm not arguing. Stating how it is. Debian has a lot more volunteers than Ubuntu does. If Debian went away, what I said specifically was that Ubuntu and it's derivatives would suffer, as they would lose all that support. There are many who contribute to Debian who will not contribute directly to Ubuntu. Likely for the same reasons Valve originally chose Debian for SteamOS and not Ubuntu.

(Instead of quoting your other messages... I'll summarize)
Ubuntu wants everyone to use snaps. The end. No one wants to use snaps though. Which is why Mint, PopOS and others have basically just used the repos of Ubuntu and do not enable snaps by default. That is the main difference to me and many of their users, is they don't enforce snap use.

I personally use PopOS on my laptop as it has one of the best integrations for that Optimus crap that everyone in the Linux community who owns one of those laptops hate with a passion. It works quite well in PopOS, I just wish my dual-boot RHEL8 would work as well, I have to basically switch to Discrete Graphics mode in the BIOS for RHEL to work, and then the battery is eaten too quickly and the thinkpad gets hot...

I'm well aware of their plans for dropping 32bit, I read all the things on it. Sure they weren't going to 'completely' drop it. But they wanted to gimp it.. onward to their step to obliterate it. Ubuntu WANTS to be the next Apple on the desktop, so they try to follow those trends, but unlike with Apple, there is really no need to drop 32bit support in Linux.

Quoting: RedfaceThey do not need to pull upstream packages from Debian, its a choice, which prevents some duplicate work in creating the packages, and a way to get a overlap of the Debian and Ubuntu developers.
Without having the packages in sid as well new versions can be maintained in the Ubuntu repositories. Some of the community maintained packages might be dropped, or only available as a snap, but there are still enough packages in main to have a full distribution.

Uhm... pretty sure it isn't a choice at the moment, it's literally automated.

One of the things people forget.
Debian repositories are split up as such.
main, contrib, non-free.
These are all considered 'supported'. main is the stuff fully compliant with the DFSG, contrib are contributed by various Debian developers and are licensed in a way that they can't be in main. Like the game-data-packager, which is essentially a bunch of scripts for creating packages around games, like it'll package up quake4 for you as a .deb package you can then install and play.
Non-free is the completely non-free stuff, like the nvidia driver, where they aren't open source and such.

Then you have Ubuntu repositories.
Main (fully supported)
Universe, and multi-verse (which I can never remember which is which, but they're all considered unsupported packages.)
I want to say there was another, but it's been a while...

Then you have chrome/chromium being a forced snap.

But really what it comes down to is... who gives a shit what I say, use what makes you happy :)