As you might have heard by now, Canonical has made the decision to drop 32bit support from Ubuntu 19.10 onwards.
Writing on the mailing list, as well as this post on Ubuntu's Community Hub, Canonical gave a reminder that the decision isn't coming without warning. It was proposed last year and it was followed up with another post detailing a final decision to be made in the middle of 2019. So here we are, the decision seems to have been made.
The problem isn't hardware, as likely around 99% of people nowadays have a 64bit capable computer. Going by our own statistics, from what 2,254 users told us only 4 are using a 32bit Linux distribution. The issue then, is mainly software and libraries needed to actually run 32bit applications. This is where it sounds like there's going to be plenty of teething issues, with a number of people not too happy about the decision.
Steam, for example, is one such application along with plenty of 32bit games that will likely never get updated, although Canonical did say they're "in discussions" with Valve about it. There's also GOG, Humble Store and itch.io which all provide a number of direct-download 32bit games, which do not supply the required 32bit libraries to run. It doesn't sound like they have been given any thought (at least they haven't been mentioned).
Another of the major problems being Wine, with a discussion now happening on their mailing list. The discussion doesn't seem to be too positive, with developer Henri Verbeet even saying "I think not building packages for Ubuntu 19.10 would be the only practical option.", although Andrew Eikum's idea of using the Steam Runtime could be an interesting way around it.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: GuestSo, the list of candidate replacements are: Debian, Mint Debian Edition, Manjaro, Endeavour, Mageia and i forgot another one: Suse ? Many will jump ship and the Linux gaming landscape will be fragmented as ever ! :P
What about MX Linux? It's based on Debian and pretty straightforward to set up.
Micromegas Jun 21, 2019
Quoting: GuestSo, the list of candidate replacements are: Debian, Mint Debian Edition, Manjaro, Endeavour, Mageia and i forgot another one: Suse ? Many will jump ship and the Linux gaming landscape will be fragmented as ever ! :P
Fragmented? How so? With the Steam runtime the distribution you use doesn't matter as long as your distribution provides a suitable C runtime and graphics driver. And for GOG games you can just install missing libraries via your distribution repository if something is missing. I'm playing so called "Ubuntu compatible" games on Mageia since years now without any problems.
Quoting: ShmerlI'm surprised about what kind of assumption he was making. That it would "just work"? How?
I'm sure the only assumption Mr Pope was making was that yelling on the internet is not a good way to express an opinion. By politely and tactfully demonstrating the problems to the developers he has made his point constructively.
Quoting: mcphailI'm sure the only assumption Mr Pope was making was that yelling on the internet is not a good way to express an opinion. By politely and tactfully demonstrating the problems to the developers he has made his point constructively.
I guess demonstration is useful. But it shows the level of cluelessness those who made such decision have. It doesn't exactly instill confidence.
Quoting: MicromegasQuoting: GuestSo, the list of candidate replacements are: Debian, Mint Debian Edition, Manjaro, Endeavour, Mageia and i forgot another one: Suse ? Many will jump ship and the Linux gaming landscape will be fragmented as ever ! :P
Fragmented? How so? With the Steam runtime the distribution you use doesn't matter as long as your distribution provides a suitable C runtime and graphics driver. And for GOG games you can just install missing libraries via your distribution repository if something is missing. I'm playing so called "Ubuntu compatible" games on Mageia since years now without any problems.
I think Dedale was referring to the possibility of the Linux community being fragmented further by creating a situation where you would have distros that don't have 32-bit libraries (Ubuntu, OpenMandriva) and distros that have them (Debian, Mageia, etc.). In such a situation, the ability of installing a suitable drivers and libraries, like you mentioned, would not apply to all distributions.
slaapliedje Jun 22, 2019
Quoting: Shmerlapt-get autoremove
is not the right way to use it though. Many forget to add purge:
apt-get autoremove --purge
By the way, they dropped the -get like a release or two ago. So now it's just
apt autoremove --purgeThough I prefer to not purge usually because occasionally I think 'crap, I wanted to keep that config file!' But then that's what etckeeper is for!
Schattenspiegel Jun 22, 2019
Oh dear... this will get interesting
Quoting: ShmerlQuoting: GuestAlan pope of Canonical tried a few GoG games on 64 bits only 19.10 and guess what ? It is not going well.
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Trying-GOG-Games-64-bit-Ubuntu
Heh, what did they expect? A lot of older games on GOG are 32-bit. Both native and Wine.
I think given the post, that he was trying to assess the comments that "Wine is fine"
QuoteI did this because there’s been a couple of assertions made:
That games ship their own required libs and will likely work
That WINE64 is sufficient for playing Windows games
In essence because people (not sure what clueless dolts were saying this) were making said claims he went out and tested those claims.
In a shock to literally no one, it was a trainwreck
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