We may potentially be in for some big changes in Fedora 44, with plans in place being discussed to drop 32-bit multilib / i686 packages.
I hope they remember what happened when Canonical planned the same for Ubuntu, when Valve jumped in to note they would no longer recommend Ubuntu and then Canonical backtracked on it. Linux distro developers may not like it, but Steam is huge and requires 32-bit to work properly for the client and for Proton / Wine.
This is only a proposed change for Fedora 44 onwards, it has not yet been approved. They're having a vote on the Fedora Forum where the change is being discussed. Even if it's approved, Steam wouldn't be the only problem, there's no doubt various other apps, tools and games that would break with such a huge change. At least with the Wine 9.0 release, WoW64 saw a huge improvement for running 32bit games on a full 64bit system.
The Fedora developers do at least note in the proposal that Wine and Steam are part of the dependencies on this, so they are thinking it through and aware of the issues.
Changes like this might push Valve to move a little quicker to adapt Steam to full 64bit, but I wouldn't expect anything ready any time soon. Especially when you look at Valve's own stats where Fedora doesn't even register in the top 11 distributions used on Steam. Although, we don't know what distros make up the 7% for the Steam Flatpak - but that's not supported by Valve anyway.
What are your thoughts?
Update 12:52 UTC - in response to some replies on their forum, the developer who proposed the change made it clear that eventually it will have to happen:
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.This is why it’s a proposal, and why I filed it more than 6 months earlier than strictly required.
But just to clarify - we will need to drop support for 32-bit x86 at some point. It’s dead, and more and more software just doesn’t support being built and / or run in 32-bit environments at all.
Yes, some things will stop working. But I hope that we can provide solutions and / or workarounds for most use cases.
And it’s better to start planning for the removal of i686 packages now than when (insert foundational package here - for example, CPython) stops supporting 32-bit architectures and we need to scramble to adapt.
About the author - Liam Dawe
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
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Kimyrielle 19 hours ago
I think having the discussion about dropping 32 bit is a good thing, even when the decision probably needs to be "not right now". But there is seriously no good reason why 32 bit applications should still be a thing in 2025, and maybe distros publicly thinking about moving on will be a much needed wake-up call for Valve and others.
4 Likes
Eduardo Medina 19 hours ago
As an orthodox Silverblue user, I support this.
2 Likes
Eike 19 hours ago
But there is seriously no good reason why 32 bit applications should still be a thing in 2025
They shouldn't be made, or they should cease to exist?
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Eduardo Medina 19 hours ago
Flatpak Steam has a whole bunch of its own issues and is not supported by Valve, it's not a direct replacement. The RPM package is not supported either.Valve made some non-official contributions to the Flatpak package and nothing for any other than the official Deb for Ubuntu and Steam client implemented in SteamOS.
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Caldathras 18 hours ago
Bonehead idealogical decisions like this potential one is one of the major reasons I have stayed away from Fedora.
This is not supposed to be what drives Linux development. Torvalds has always said that what makes Linux stand out is it's backwards compatibility. Why should Linux ape the mentality of the for-profit sector?
no good reason why 32 bit applications should still be a thing in 2025Who says? The followers of a progress-first ideology that was founded on maximizing corporate profits at the expense of all other benefits? All that has done is to create a throwaway culture that fails to value anything from the past.
This is not supposed to be what drives Linux development. Torvalds has always said that what makes Linux stand out is it's backwards compatibility. Why should Linux ape the mentality of the for-profit sector?
Valve should go full 64bit, and drop/integrate the 32bit requirement/legacy.You may feel this is a good idea but that does not mean that Valve agrees. There could be a very good reason they have not done this (don't ask me what, I have no idea myself).
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They will lose a lot of users with such future plans...
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Kimyrielle 14 hours ago
They shouldn't be made, or they should cease to exist?
Other than unmaintained legacy software, they should not exist anymore. There is simply no good excuse for not having ported your application to 64 bits, if you're still working on it in 2025.
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Other than unmaintained legacy software. . . Of which there is probably quite a bit. Specifically relevant to this forum, nearly all older games are "unmaintained legacy software".
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elmapul 7 hours ago
Horrible news, Bazzite is based on fedora, they will have to find another umbrela distro, or maintain a lot of extra stuff.
i mean, there is no reason why an pixel art indie game shouldnt work on a potato pc that some poor people have in some country who barely have eletricity and internet , let alone modern computers.
i think we are entering another flash vs kill flash, x11 vs wayland discussion...
i recomend this presentation for anyone thinking legacy dont matter, but i dont think its your case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65crLKNQR0E
Other than unmaintained legacy software, they should not exist anymore. There is simply no good excuse for not having ported your application to 64 bits, if you're still working on it in 2025.i think modern compilers target 64 bits by default, so you have to put some extra effort in order to support people with old machines, wich is a good thing actually...
i mean, there is no reason why an pixel art indie game shouldnt work on a potato pc that some poor people have in some country who barely have eletricity and internet , let alone modern computers.
i think we are entering another flash vs kill flash, x11 vs wayland discussion...
i recomend this presentation for anyone thinking legacy dont matter, but i dont think its your case:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65crLKNQR0E
2 Likes
omer666 6 hours ago
To me, this only means more work for RPMfusion, which means "same as before but unofficial," as most RPMfusion contributors are also Fedora package maintainers... So this decision would actually increase maintainers burden, but at the same time would bring awareness around the subject.
Either way I don't think we are going to be forced to change distro, but I could be wrong...
Either way I don't think we are going to be forced to change distro, but I could be wrong...
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TactikalKitty 6 hours ago
The last 32bit Linux I used was maybe Peppermint OS or maybe PCLinuxOS. If Fedora drops 32bit support, and we don't run Steam in a container, I am assuming, even if Steam itself was upgraded to 64bt, many games like the early Call of Duty games, will not work anymore? I know that Call of Duty on Mac worked for a long time on OSX Snow Leopard and when Apple dropped 32bt support, that game wont' run at all. Is that the type of situation we are running into now but with Linux?
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poiuz 5 hours ago
i mean, there is no reason why an pixel art indie game shouldnt work on a potato pc that some poor people have in some country who barely have eletricity and internet , let alone modern computers.Which modern games actually run on an Athlon XP? Unity & Godot both require SSE2 & I think there is no OpenGL 3.3 AGP card.
i think we are entering another flash vs kill flash, x11 vs wayland discussion...Flash was a security nightmare & had to die. But isn't there a new implementation even for flash?
The others are different: X11 is still supported by Wayland & 32bit will be still supported by 64bit systems. Someone will have to maintain a container runtime but old software can still run. But the burden isn't something all distributions have to shoulder.
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rea987 5 hours ago
Ugh, that's disgusting. Resorting Apple solutions for problems do not exist? Are these people insane? Just yesterday, I spend hours trying to downgrade my wife's Mac into Mojave to be able to play back catalogue of 32 bit games, and now I am seeing this.
And ofc, some cheer that as this will force Valve to adopt 64 bit client, improve Proton, and Steam Linux Runtime should solve all other problems.
Firstly, Steam is 64 bit on macOS for both ARM64 and x86-64 builds. And guess what, it is still slow, clunky and unresponsive. It's not the architecture problem, rather a GUI issue. As long as Chromium Embedded Framework is used, Steam will continue to crawl, architecture upgrade will not solve that.
Secondly, Valve cannot be forced to drop an arch when majority of distros still supporting it. Remember, it is Valve who pushed for Linux client when Windows 8 turned out to be a disaster. Fedora is simply overestimating itself here.
Lastly, as much as some people refuse to acknowledge, native Linux games do exist. And just like in 32 bit macOS case, they won't be updated any time soon. Heck, my favourite FPS, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars that I still play online is an abandonware from 2007, who do you think will update it into x86-64?
Solution? Kindly keep asking Valve to switch its client into x86-64 while keeping the 32 bit compatibility. Keep everyone happy. Cheers!✌🏻
And ofc, some cheer that as this will force Valve to adopt 64 bit client, improve Proton, and Steam Linux Runtime should solve all other problems.
Firstly, Steam is 64 bit on macOS for both ARM64 and x86-64 builds. And guess what, it is still slow, clunky and unresponsive. It's not the architecture problem, rather a GUI issue. As long as Chromium Embedded Framework is used, Steam will continue to crawl, architecture upgrade will not solve that.
Secondly, Valve cannot be forced to drop an arch when majority of distros still supporting it. Remember, it is Valve who pushed for Linux client when Windows 8 turned out to be a disaster. Fedora is simply overestimating itself here.
Lastly, as much as some people refuse to acknowledge, native Linux games do exist. And just like in 32 bit macOS case, they won't be updated any time soon. Heck, my favourite FPS, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars that I still play online is an abandonware from 2007, who do you think will update it into x86-64?
Solution? Kindly keep asking Valve to switch its client into x86-64 while keeping the 32 bit compatibility. Keep everyone happy. Cheers!✌🏻
5 Likes
pleasereadthemanual 5 hours ago
Secondly, Valve cannot be forced to drop an arch when majority of distros still supporting it. Remember, it is Valve who pushed for Linux client when Windows 8 turned out to be a disaster. Fedora is simply overestimating itself here.Fedora isn't doing this to exert control over Valve. As the developer who proposed the change mentioned, it's a big maintenance burden on the volunteers who build Fedora. And that's honestly a fair reason. 32-bit support exists almost purely for games. This is a big deal on Windows and macOS, but for Linux...I honestly don't think it matters much. Native binaries on Linux rot exponentially faster and I doubt many 32-bit binaries would work even in 32-bit enviornments.
Conversely, Wine supports running 32-bit games in a 64-bit environment, with trade-offs.
The real issues caused by dropping 32-bit support in Fedora won't be with games. It'll be with Steam, Gamescope, OBS, and other tooling around games.
It's the same reason Fedora is dropping X11 across the board - maintenance burden. It's the same reason they're proomoting Atomic distributions to the main distributions soon - maintenance burden + user experience.
It's not a bad reason. Sure would be annoying to people who use Gamescope and the like, though.
1 Likes
Dropping 32 bit support is one of the reasons Mac stopped getting proton support IIRC, this would have disastrous consequences. I recently saw one of the bazzite devs also straight up said that if 32 bit support is dropped that means the end of that distro full stop.
I literally just got a friend into linux because of bazzite, if this happens it WILL turn people away from linux. This isn't some ideological "well you lose some functionality but it's otherwise generally pretty fine for the sake of progress" thing like Wayland vs X11, this is a matter of "If you do this, you will lose many people when they realize stuff they use regularly no longer works."
Nobara and Bazzite are my go-to recommendations for distros, and both are based on fedora, this is genuinely some of the worst linux news I've heard since the xz backdoor, except that wasn't even as bad, because that was unintentional and fixed quickly, while this is going to be more permanent and cause many more visible problems.
Gamescope is one of the main genuine advantages linux has over windows for people who play video games, especially old ones. And the ability to record on linux is essential, so if OBS goes that's really bad.
Last edited by WMan22 on 25 Jun 2025 at 6:50 am UTC
I literally just got a friend into linux because of bazzite, if this happens it WILL turn people away from linux. This isn't some ideological "well you lose some functionality but it's otherwise generally pretty fine for the sake of progress" thing like Wayland vs X11, this is a matter of "If you do this, you will lose many people when they realize stuff they use regularly no longer works."
Nobara and Bazzite are my go-to recommendations for distros, and both are based on fedora, this is genuinely some of the worst linux news I've heard since the xz backdoor, except that wasn't even as bad, because that was unintentional and fixed quickly, while this is going to be more permanent and cause many more visible problems.
Gamescope is one of the main genuine advantages linux has over windows for people who play video games, especially old ones. And the ability to record on linux is essential, so if OBS goes that's really bad.
Last edited by WMan22 on 25 Jun 2025 at 6:50 am UTC
2 Likes
rea987 5 hours ago
As the developer who proposed the change mentioned, it's a big maintenance burden on the volunteers who build Fedora
- Maintaining x11 is a burden.
- Maintaining 32 bit is a burden.
- Maintaining OpenGL is a burden.
- Maintaining SDL2 is a burden.
- Maintaining Gecko is a burden.
- Maintaining Java is a burden.
Let me tell you as a person who works in an entirely different field as a maintenance specialist; MAINTENANCE ITSELF IS A BURDEN. But it needs to be done, not because it's fun or easy, because it's necessary. Look at the list above and tell me you don't see any similarities with Apple.
Mayhaps, Fedora shouldn't rely volunteers on maintaining core elements of the OS.
Edit: Missing volunteers word added at the last sentence.
Last edited by rea987 on 25 Jun 2025 at 6:57 am UTC
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Phlebiac 4 hours ago
Mayhaps, Fedora shouldn't rely volunteers on maintaining core elements of the OS.
Who should they rely on instead? Paid Red Hat developers? RHEL already dropped 32-bit support.
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Eike 4 hours ago
MAINTENANCE ITSELF IS A BURDEN. But it needs to be done, not because it's fun or easy, because it's necessary.
Well, I guess we found the problem here?
Coping with burdon is usually paid for and not done by volunteers in their free time.
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Vortex_Acherontic 3 hours ago
Shouldn't Steam as a flatpak not just keep working?
At least it does for me on Aeon which to my knowledge ships no 32bit libs as well and Steam works just fine for me as a flatpak.
At least it does for me on Aeon which to my knowledge ships no 32bit libs as well and Steam works just fine for me as a flatpak.
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I use Fedora but I am not such much into all the technical stuff behind. But: guess it's time for Valve to move on to a "modern" 64-bit-base. Also but: Valve doesn't give a **** about what other people want. They always do their thing. So I guess we can hope for a 64-bit-version but I do not except anything coming soon.
So IF Fedora drops this libs I am pretty sure there will be workarounds or other things that keep steam running. If not (or with problems) then it's time for me to look for another distro. But I guess that will not be necessary.
So IF Fedora drops this libs I am pretty sure there will be workarounds or other things that keep steam running. If not (or with problems) then it's time for me to look for another distro. But I guess that will not be necessary.
0 Likes
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