Canonical have released a statement on Ubuntu and 32bit support, will keep select packages

Quoting: Micromegas

Quoting: riusmaI think that this discussion on Twitter is interesting (imho) on that subject (Neal Gompa is from Fedora). :)

Very interesting discussion, indeed, explaining in detail why maintaing 32bit libs is not easy for those distributions which really care that everything works.

From tweet:
"Distributions like Solus keep 32-bit afloat by more or less ignoring it. They basically say "it compiles, ship it". Distributions that actually *care* to validate the 32-bit stuff (Fedora, Mageia, openSUSE, Ubuntu, etc.) have to do a fair bit of work to ensure it's not broken."

Resource constraints aside (as this was presented as a matter of caring, not resource limitation), does Solus trivialize multilib QA?

Quoting: Guest

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...

When will you see the general picture? Ubuntu is reducing it's investments in the non-AI and non-IoT space since 2015 (or maybe much earlier). And it's very easy to find the reasons:

Canonical plans to raise its first outside funding as it looks to a future IPO "Throughout the years, Shuttleworth self-funded the project and never showed much interest in taking outside money. Now, however, that’s changing."

Mark Shuttleworth sees increased demand for enterprise Ubuntu Linux desktop "We have seen companies signing up for Linux desktop support, because they want to have fleets of Ubuntu desktop for their artificial intelligence engineers. We're starting actually now to commercially support the desktop in a way that we've never been asked to before," he said.

Canonical updates Ubuntu Core OS for IoT devices "Canonical’s announcement is important because although the battle for desktop and smartphone OS dominance has already been decided, it’s still pretty much wide open in the case of IoT, said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president of Constellation Research Inc."

Why are you trying to keep Ubuntu alive for your own use case when their CEO and their team want to neglect your preferences and instead focus on IoT and AI?

So 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...

Quoting: PatolaI am eagerly waiting for the Steam announcement for a supported distro.

Me too, hermano, me too.

QuoteAfter the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release we had extensive threads on the ubuntu-devel list and also consulted Valve in detail on the topic.

I don't see how this statement could be true, and yet shortly after Canonical's announcement a representative from Valve stated that they would be seeking a new Linux distribution.

Quoting: Maath

QuoteAfter the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release we had extensive threads on the ubuntu-devel list and also consulted Valve in detail on the topic.

I don't see how this statement could be true, and yet shortly after Canonical's announcement a representative from Valve stated that they would be seeking a new Linux distribution.

Maybe a left hand/right hand problem.
Possible that neither Valve's nor Canonical's hands properly talked with each other.

This all really does scream "COMMUNICATION ISSUES - collapsing empires since ancient Rome".


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 25 June 2019 at 1:59 pm UTC

Quoting: F.UltraI think that what you have seen from the outside is Canonical going from having endless funds (from Shuttleworths selling of Twathe) to having those funds being dried up and having to earn actual income in order to stay alive.

I still believe that they have an interest in being a good linux distro, their users and the desktop. Just that they also try to cut everything unnecessary in order to keep the cost down as much as possible and this time they made the wrong decision that they thought that no one was using 32-bit software.

I myself stopped building 32-bit versions of our software back in 2016 when that first announcement came on ubuntu-dev and have not received a single request for it since then so I do think that it's an easy assumption to do unless you are deep into games and Wine.

About the "postponed" bit we don't really know about that either, earlier they where to abandon it altogether so in time they might come to the conclusion that they cannot postpone it either.

Indeed, it is not Shuttleworth's responsibility to indefinitely support what has enough popularity to be an entirely community maintained and funded operation, that's how he see's it, how you see it, how I see it, certainly.

IMO Valve should be the one funding the 32-bit support effort, they have the most at stake there, they have vast wealth to draw from and the motivation to gather the required resources. There perhaps ought to be a choice upon installation of Ubuntu whether to include legacy gaming support - Valve's official container (flatpak, Snap) or their official PPA, therein residing not only Steam but also all the maintained legacy 32-bit libraries at the heart of this whole imbroglio.

Valve has expended quite a huge effort toward improving gaming on linux. The client, the Steam machine efforts, Vulkan contributions, consultation and conferences with devs, and now proton. It is a huge effort, they must have easily spent millions on this. They prove their recent continued investment with proton - they have made the biggest investments of time and resources, I await their next move. IMO they should support Canonical and form an agreement to handle the 32-bit stuff going forward.

The saga continues…

Spoiler alert: The end of the world is not happening today. The mankind should rejoice!

Honestly it's actually quite amusing.


Last edited by bolokanar on 25 June 2019 at 2:19 pm UTC

Quoting: zen_xeno

Quoting: F.UltraI think that what you have seen from the outside is Canonical going from having endless funds (from Shuttleworths selling of Twathe) to having those funds being dried up and having to earn actual income in order to stay alive.

I still believe that they have an interest in being a good linux distro, their users and the desktop. Just that they also try to cut everything unnecessary in order to keep the cost down as much as possible and this time they made the wrong decision that they thought that no one was using 32-bit software.

I myself stopped building 32-bit versions of our software back in 2016 when that first announcement came on ubuntu-dev and have not received a single request for it since then so I do think that it's an easy assumption to do unless you are deep into games and Wine.

About the "postponed" bit we don't really know about that either, earlier they where to abandon it altogether so in time they might come to the conclusion that they cannot postpone it either.

Indeed, it is not Shuttleworth's responsibility to indefinitely support what has enough popularity to be an entirely community maintained and funded operation, that's how he see's it, how you see it, how I see it, certainly.

IMO Valve should be the one funding the 32-bit support effort, they have the most at stake there, they have vast wealth to draw from and the motivation to gather the required resources. There perhaps ought to be a choice upon installation of Ubuntu whether to include legacy gaming support - Valve's official container (flatpak, Snap) or their official PPA, therein residing not only Steam but also all the maintained legacy 32-bit libraries at the heart of this whole imbroglio.

Valve has expended quite a huge effort toward improving gaming on linux. The client, the Steam machine efforts, Vulkan contributions, consultation and conferences with devs, and now proton. It is a huge effort, they must have easily spent millions on this. They prove their recent continued investment with proton - they have made the biggest investments of time and resources, I await their next move. IMO they should support Canonical and form an agreement to handle the 32-bit stuff going forward.

I do think however that it's in Ubuntu:s best interest to keep the 32-bit libs, if they loose too many users due to this then they risk becoming irrelevant which will impact them in the areas where they do make a living.

Quoting: subIt's a personal thing.
Feel free to hate me for this, but I never liked Ubuntu being considered *THE* desktop Linux distribution - long before the Mir and Unity troubles, btw.

With the latest move(s) I had high hopes that this might finally change in favour of sth. better.

Ubuntu has always had the goal of being an easy to use, easy to maintain Linux distro that "just works", and to that end, they have greatly succeeded, and most people who use Ubuntu and its variants don't know or care about the behind-the-scenes politics.

I suppose the question is, what other distros offer Ubuntu's "it just works" ease of use but without the "political" downsides?


Last edited by Mountain Man on 25 June 2019 at 2:39 pm UTC

Quoting: GuestThousands of studies link low-level wireless radio frequency radiation exposures to a long list of adverse biological effects, including: [...]

No (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. :)