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As an update to the situation around Canonical planning to drop 32bit support (and Valve saying bye-bye to Ubuntu 19.10+ support), apparently they're not. Instead, the 32bit libraries will be frozen. Are you confused yet? I sure am.

Canonical's Steve Langasek has attempted to clarify the situation. Here's what they said:

I’m sorry that we’ve given anyone the impression that we are “dropping support for i386 applications”. That’s simply not the case. What we are dropping is updates to the i386 libraries, which will be frozen at the 18.04 LTS versions. But there is every intention to ensure that there is a clear story for how i386 applications (including games) can be run on versions of Ubuntu later than 19.10.

That's at least a little better, isn't it? They also said a little further:

[…] since the vast majority of i386-only software is also legacy (closed-source, will never be rebuilt), it also does not generally benefit from newer libraries […]

There's a pretty big difference from not being "included as an architecture", to having them available but frozen and still possible to use, isn't there? It's confusing, since that's not how it was originally explained. This is something that should have been said very clearly from the start.

Perhaps this might not be the epic disaster many people (myself included) thought it might turn out to be. We still have to wait and see how exactly they implement all this, and how it will affect gaming.

There's still going to be confusion and issues though, like upgrading drivers. Touching on that, Langasek said:

32-bit mesa will be available in the Ubuntu 18.04 repository. Note that mesa already gets updates in 18.04 which track the versions from later Ubuntu releases, as part of hardware enablement. If incompatibilities are introduced beyond 20.04 (which is the cutoff for hardware enablement backports for 18.04), we will need to address them on a case-by-case basis.

So it sounds like you're still going to be stuck in some ways. Seems like the proposal is still no good for Wine either (and so Steam Play too).

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Distro News, Misc
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Shmerl Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: x_wingIn short, all the suggested workarounds are by far more expensive than simply compiling the base deps for x86.

They might be more expensive to develop, but it can be better than having nothing when upstream libraries simply decide to drop 32-bit support to begin with. They can do it at some point. Then what?


Last edited by Shmerl on 24 June 2019 at 2:03 am UTC
x_wing Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: ShmerlThey might be more expensive to develop, but it can be better than having nothing when upstream libraries simply decide to drop 32-bit support to begin with. They can do it at some point. Then what?

In the moment that any library drops 32-bit support (which is kinda debatable as x86 and AMD64 are a very related instruction set) you just freeze to the last version of the library that is supported. Basically, what Ubuntu says are going to do now but with the problem that they are doing this before any common library got into such "milestone".


Last edited by x_wing on 24 June 2019 at 2:12 am UTC
Draconicrose Jun 24, 2019
I wonder how this will affect Linux Mint.
Satoru 6 years Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: sub
Quoting: liamdaweSounds like Wine still won't work: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/i386-architecture-will-be-dropped-starting-with-eoan-ubuntu-19-10/11263/121?u=liamdawe

Good read, Liam.

How can the pros at Canonical miss THIS?
Shouldn't they know about the rough design and dependencies of one of their most prominent software packages?
I mean, dropping Wine isn't something they'd consider a good move for sure.

*facepalm*

They didn't miss it

They dont care

Gamers are not their customers. Thus their needs are moot. They don't care if Wine doesn't run. They don't care if steam doesn't run (though functionally steam could easily get a 64-bit client out, it woudl just mean extra filtering of games that aren't compiled for 64-bit being filtered on the library side, oh and Proton basically not working anymore. But Valve can get a working 64-bit client that works with 64-bit compiled Linux games)

They know the problem. They just don't care.
Satoru 6 years Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: Luke_NukemI just purged all *386 libs from my install, including Steam. Then installed Steam via flatpak...

No. Issues. At. All.

But this doesn't solve HumbleBumble or GOG. Though I do seem to recall and automated GOG->flatpak creator?

Note steam comes with its own libs so its going to work regardless

Thatissn't the problem. you can duct tape and bubble gum steam to work. Steam can easily get a 64-bit client if they really wanted, since they already have one for Macs.

Getting the steam client to run isnt the problem

its all the downstream games that wont work that aren't complied for 64-bit. This will cause confusion when you see a game in your library, install it, and the game implodes on you. While game B somehow works. But Game C doesn't? And neither does Game D. Oh yeah and Proton also no lnoger works, so why does the steam client list those. Now you have a UI/UX nightmare, that applies to a SINGLE distro only.

SO you could

1) make all these bizarre exceptions in the UI/UX for one distro
2) abandon the distro as unsupported and go to literally any other distro where this problem doesnt exist

Ubuntu isn't Apple or Microsoft. They don't have the clout to force developers to 'make things their way'. There are a plethora of equivalent options available and there's no incentive to hack together a broken experience, when you can just dump them and tell your users to use literally any other distro on the planet and everything on steam will work.


GOG has its own problems where they techncally have Linux games, but their main push on the client side Galaxy hasn't had a Linux option in 4 years and 2.0 doesnt seem to be addressing this either. Epic also has no Linux client for users who have games on Epic that have Linux version on STeam. Say what you will about Steam, but Steam is the only one actually serious about gaming on Linux and putting money where their mouth is via Vulkan, Wine/Proton, and now KDE.


Last edited by Satoru on 24 June 2019 at 3:01 am UTC
Koopacabras Jun 24, 2019
QuoteUbuntu isn't Apple or Microsoft. They don't have the clout to force developers to 'make things their way'. There are a plethora of equivalent options available and there's no incentive to hack together a broken experience, when you can just dump them and tell your users to use literally any other distro on the planet and everything on steam will work.

exactly that's the point, windows didn't drop 32bits, but once they said that from now on all apps should be UWP (universal windows platform) they had a major backslash and they decided to not implement it. If MS had this problem, it is clear that ubuntu has to backpedal, if not then the linux desktop will be hit hard, and none of us can really recommend Ubuntu to anyone, I'm an opensuse user but I recommended ubuntu to a lot of ppl besides of having a netbook with mint, I'm afraid I will never do that again. If someone is a windows die hard fan (and I can't recommend him linux) I will tell him to use windows 7, never windows 10, similar thing will happen to ubuntu. this draws the same line that when Windows tried to push lock-ins into windows 10 and making window-store apps (UWP) mandatory. The damage is already done, but It will be less severe if they backpedal.

it's the same thing that happened to windows 10 essentially forcing to get every app through their store, effectively ubuntu will be forcing ppl to get steam and games on top of flatpak/snap containers, in some way this is a lock-in, not intended that way by the devs, but it will work the same way as MS/UWP lock-ins.

ps: or maybe this is intentional? and they are trying to push flatpak/snap ? ugly stuff anyway.


Last edited by Koopacabras on 24 June 2019 at 3:31 am UTC
Nevertheless Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: Luke_NukemI just purged all *386 libs from my install, including Steam. Then installed Steam via flatpak...

No. Issues. At. All.

But this doesn't solve HumbleBumble or GOG. Though I do seem to recall and automated GOG->flatpak creator?

Look here ->
https://twitter.com/jjardon/status/1143032412361773056?s=20
Gryxx Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: Nevertheless
Quoting: x_wing
Quoting: Luke_NukemI just purged all *386 libs from my install, including Steam. Then installed Steam via flatpak...

No. Issues. At. All.

But this doesn't solve HumbleBumble or GOG. Though I do seem to recall and automated GOG->flatpak creator?

And what about proton games? Do they work without problems?

I have no problems at all.
So, how you can install games to non-system drive? As i recall, flatpak Steam is isolated from the rest of OS. You cannot go out of flatpak's file system.

EDIT: Without changing location of Steam, of course. For example leave Steam (and some games) on SSD and keep rest of them on two separate HDD drives.


Last edited by Gryxx on 24 June 2019 at 6:15 am UTC
poiuz Jun 24, 2019
Quoting: GryxxSo, how you can install games to non-system drive? As i recall, flatpak Steam is isolated from the rest of OS. You cannot go out of flatpak's file system.
You can configure the sandbox (I don't think there is a GUI, yet): Flatpak Sandbox Permissions

You can put your Flatpaks anywhere you want, too: Flatpak installation
Linuxwarper Jun 24, 2019
Canonical doesn't seem to care. So I will be happy to switch distribution once it's viable. Not that I am using the standard Ubuntu, after Gnome memory issues I decided against it.
Tweets by Canonical/Ubuntu accounts with gaming filters (and a Microsoft one)

I'm with Valve. They have done alot for gaming on linux as of late that I have faith in them. Here is a fun fact: when I went to install Dota Underlords on my phone, they had even included APK download options!
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