We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

It seems Canonical have done a bit of a U-turn on dropping 32bit support for Ubuntu, as many expected they would do. Their official statement is now out for those interested.

The most important part to be aware of is their new plan:

Thanks to the huge amount of feedback this weekend from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community, we will change our plan and build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.

We will put in place a community process to determine which 32-bit packages are needed to support legacy software, and can add to that list post-release if we miss something that is needed.

That's not the end of it though of course, eventually 32bit will be dropped which is inevitable really. Just not fully this time. Touching on this, they said in the post about using "container technology" to address "the ultimate end of life of 32-bit libraries" so hopefully by that time everything they need will be in place to make it super easy for users.

I'm glad Canonical have seen some sense on this, they clearly didn't communicate it well enough to begin with but they at least understand when they've made a big mistake like this and owning up to failures is part of what builds trust, so I'm happier now. Next time this happens, I just hope they give a very clear roadmap giving everyone proper time to prepare, which they didn't this time.

Their full statement is here. It will be interesting to see how Valve react, after announcing an end of Ubuntu support for Steam for Ubuntu 19.10 onwards.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Tags: Distro News, Misc
23 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check 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. Find me on Mastodon.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
106 comments
Page: «10/11»
  Go to:

F.Ultra Jun 25, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: F.UltraSo Ubuntu seeing more money in IoT and AI and thus want to put some focus into those areas are now them neglecting our preferences? Seriously, what is it with this whole distro-wars thing where people who use/like another distro just have to throw all kinds of shit at everyone else?

Could it be so simple as they actually thought that no one used 32-bit applications anymore since they saw the downloads of thsoe packages dropping off since 2015? No of course it has to be some grand evil plan where they want to remove everything that isn't IoT or AI...

You have many assumptions but they are mostly incorrect. I respect Ubuntu and I didn't throw all kinds of shit at everyone else. I started on Ubuntu 10.10 and I saw the many questionable decisions that they made since 2010.

It's also undeniable that they are focusing more on IoT recently. We live in a world where people want more. 5G, and the Internet of Things (IoT) that goes with it, promises to give us more.

5G and IoT promises to connect us in our homes, schools, workplaces, cities, parks and open spaces to over a trillion objects around the world. It promises cars that drive themselves, washing machines that order their own washing powder and softener plus of course super fast downloads and streaming.

And because I want to help humanity and Ubuntu users I will give you some additional IoT sector facts.

The USA is currently leading the way on 5G. At the June 2016 press conference where the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) head Tom Wheeler announced the opening up of low, mid and high spectrum’s. There was no mention of health effects whatsoever. But the dangers are real.

Thousands of studies link low-level wireless radio frequency radiation exposures to a long list of adverse biological effects, including:

DNA single and double strand breaks
oxidative damage
disruption of cell metabolism
increased blood brain barrier permeability
melatonin reduction
disruption to brain glucose metabolism
generation of stress proteins
a denser soup of electrosmog
effects on the skin
effects on the eyes
effects on the heart
immune system effects
effects on bacteria resistance
effects on plant health
effects on the atmosphere and depletion of fossil fuels
disruption of the natural ecosystem

That is just a long list of unsubstantiated pseudoscience that have no basis in reality. And if you do find some real studies in that long list of yours I can guarantee right now that they are studying energies that are extremely more powerful than was is used in wireless communications.

We've had cellphones and wireless networks for 36 years and still there is not a single case of increasing cancer rates or other deceases that the cranks are connecting to radio frequencies.

Fun fact is that the number of "EM-sensitive" people have decreased by a large margin since Facebook and Instagram became popular. Strange isn't it. Another fun fact is that to date there has not been a single "EM-sensitive" person that have been able to determine if they have been exposed or not to EM-radiation when the tests are blinded, imagine why...
Eike Jun 25, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: riusmaNo (or that "thousands of studies" are not peer-reviewed and published in very low quality publications that can accept studies with poor methodology). You will find a good (and recent) summary of the state of the art here with a curated bibliography on this subject. :)

The base claim, "Heat is the only influence radio can have on a body", is disputed. I could give you a Geman source if it helps you.

PS: And the following is a red flag of non-science: "Claims of harm from cell phone use — not just 5G, but all cell phones — should also be red flagged because they are tirelessly promoted by the Environmental Working Group". Truth never depends on whichever group agrees or disagrees.


Last edited by Eike on 25 June 2019 at 4:13 pm UTC
TheSHEEEP Jun 25, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: EikeEven tinfoil hat wearers won't have everything in their lives wrong.
Of course not!
Their brains are not yet rotting away from cellphone radiation! Duh!
Eike Jun 25, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Quoting: TheSHEEEP
Quoting: EikeEven tinfoil hat wearers won't have everything in their lives wrong.
Of course not!
Their brains are not yet rotting away from cellphone radiation! Duh!

If my words are missunderstandable:
When they use an alarm clock to wake up in the morning, this doesn't make alarm clocks wrong. (I'll remove that so people won't be distracted.)


Last edited by Eike on 25 June 2019 at 4:14 pm UTC
thelimeydragon Jun 25, 2019
For some WINE games/programs you would also need the 32-bit version of Timidity and all the things it requires to listen/play MIDI music in your windows software.
riusma Jun 25, 2019
Quoting: EikeThe base claim, "Heat is the only influence radio can have on a body", is disputed. I could give you a Geman source if it helps you.

I know that there is studies that investigate potential effects at cell level and have shown potential pathways... but on that subject only epidemiological studies on large population are relevant (knowing that there is a potential way for an effect means nothing if this effect do not exist in the population... we are using cellphones etc. since at least 20 years so we don't lack data in this field). Such studies (large population with statistically relevant results) simply do not exist for now...

(You know that my German is even far poorer that my English? I'm probably just able to get a bier in a pub and I just remember the first half of Die Lorelei by Heinrich Heine... which is probably not that bad when I think about it! ^_^)

Quoting: EikePS: And the following is a red flag of non-science: "Claims of harm from cell phone use — not just 5G, but all cell phones — should also be red flagged because they are tirelessly promoted by the Environmental Working Group". Truth never depends on whichever group agrees or disagrees.

No sorry. The "red flag" here is not that one should discard those claims blindly, but that one should be very careful when reading facts from a source that is known to give bad information (they may be wrong or right, but one should be more cautious with such sources). :)

Btw, I'm not sure where we are herding this discussion that is far from the original topic of the post, and it's difficult for me to have such discussion in English so I should probably stop here (sorry for any mistake in my comment, I can assure you that no baker has been harmed during the operations). :P


Last edited by riusma on 25 June 2019 at 5:02 pm UTC
Nanobang Jun 25, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter
IoT: More ways to be hacked, more ways to be spied on. Socio-techno dross. Also pretty unrelated to the article at hand---not as unrelated as, say EMF sickness, but pretty fuckin' unrelated all the same. :D
Purple Library Guy Jun 25, 2019
Quoting: Prime_EvilGiven that part of the reason for dropping support for 32-bit libraries is the effort required to perform QA, would it be worth running a fundraiser so those who care about continued multiarch support can contribute towards a solution? Would Canonical be open to such a solution - it seems a better use of the community's time and effort than the angst out there at the moment...
The angst out there at the moment got them to partially change their mind in just a couple of days, and that's just so far. Seems like a good use of time to me.
Purple Library Guy Jun 25, 2019
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: TobiSGD
Quoting: GuestI can see why they want to remove 32 bit libs because it's a ton of work.
But a ton of work for whom? They still get the majority of their packages directly from Debian, throwing a patch on one or the other package and just compile. If Debian still supports newer versions of 32 bit libraries, how much work is there really to be done for canonical?

How much work is it to deal with many many thousands of packages and actually make a new release every 6 months? If I need to explain to you why there is a lot of work to do this the conversation is kinda already over I'm sad to say. Sure they get packages from Debian. There is a lot of work maintaining and supporting them as a whole. If you don't think keeping 32 bit is a lot of work I think you're somewhat out of touch. Sure, it's easier than if they had to make every single package themselves, but that doesn't mean it's not complex to keep everything working smoothly and supporting it.
Are we talking about two different things again? Many thousands sounds rather like you're talking about releasing the whole distro on 32-bit, so as to be usable on 32-bit hardware. But after this many pages of discussion, I thought it was rather clear that's not what we're talking about and not something most people had a problem with.
Do all the 32-bit games etc. really depend on thousands of libraries? I'm prepared to be told yes, it just seems kind of odd.
Klaus Jun 26, 2019
Quoting: Guest
Quoting: Shmerl
Quoting: GuestThat's fine, you can be out. Just how many 32 bit apps do you run on your machine? I run one, steam.

I guess you are not a gamer and not in this topic then. A lot of older games are 32-bit, especially Wine use case. I'd say any game older than from 2015 - is very likely 32-bit. That's a lot of games! So Steam client itself is pretty much irrelevant in comparison with sheer amount of 32-bit games.


But they are keeping the 32 bit stuff that makes everything work currently. They don't make older games anymore.

As I understand, the problem is more than just the legacy games; If it were just an issue of legacy 32bit native applications, frozen library versions might suffice – though I'm not adept enough with Linux to check that statement.

The major issue seems to be that Wine/Proton need 32bit libraries to provide compatibility with Windows software, and they need updated versions of those libraries in order to continue to improve:

QUOTE=jre-phoenix, at discourse.ubuntu.com [(link)]

[Wine heavily relies on i386. Not only for legacy 32-bit software, but also “almost all” 64-bit software uses a 32-bit installer.[1] “It’s practically impossible to implement 32-bit on top of 64-bit”, so that you wouldn’t need i386 at all.[2]. So although Wine will still be available in the Ubuntu archive on amd64, it’ll be basically useless.

To support current features in new Wine releases you need recent versions of a few libraries (e.g. faudio, vulkan-loader and vkd3d, and those require other recent stuff like sdl2, …).[3] If you use our Debian packages also current versions of unicode-data and khronos-api. 18.04 is already too old to fully support current Wine with (all) current features. [...]](https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/intel-32bit-packages-on-ubuntu-from-19-10-onwards/11263/121)[/QUOTE]
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.