Okay it seems you may have misunderstood something along the lines here. Let me clear things up:

Well then that's really not a solution. So first of all, it involves massive duplication of effort. If every individual app is individually re-doing the work, then the maintenance the Fedora people don't want to do once would have to be done hundreds or thousands of times. That's insanely stupid.

There is no duplicate effort. Maybe I was a bit unspecific here: The 32bit runtimes are there. As an application developer all you have to do is to tell which runtimes are required for your app to function so flatpak can link them at runtime for your application to be used. Just as if you would install any given set of libraries on a native Linux distribution in order to run the application. Additionally runtimes are shared across flatpaks. No duplicate installation no additional space no need for self packaging them either.

Actually there is duplicate effort as things are right now as every single Linux distribution has to repackage libraries themselves. Defaulting to Flatpak would massively reduce duplicate effort here. Not increase it. That one of it's key features after all.

But wait, it gets worse! Much of the point here is precisely about apps, such as old games, that people want to use but which are not maintained and furthermore are not open source. There is nobody to package them, let alone each do all this individual compiling of libraries.

I don't understand how this argument supports your point of view at all. There is nobody to package these applications for any Linux distribution as well if they are closed source. What is the point here?

However most devs of proprietary software bundle required libraries with their application anyway. Looking at any random Linux native game here for example. If they work on a native Linux distribution with 32bit support. So they will work with flatpak too.

An application does not need to be open source to be packaged as a flatpak. You can think of flatpak as it's own mini distribution running atop your distribution of choice if you will.

If the game is on Steam, simply run it from flatpak Steam and it will keep working. If they are not on Steam, then run them via Lutris, Heroic Games Launcher, Minigalaxy, Faugus Launcher, Cartridges, Bottles the choices are endless they all have the 32bit runtimes made available to them. This way nobody needs to package said application as a flatpak.

Mark my words: "There is not a single application I can not run on my 64bit (immutable and rolling release) distribution. As long as it is technically possible to run said software on Linux at all obviously."

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I will now end the discussion with you at this point as it seems to me you lack vital knowledge here to take this discussion any further. I wish you all the best and thank you for your time.

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Flatpaks have to get the libraries somewhere, why are so many people ignoring this?

Huh? I don't see this getting ignored. Flathub is not reliant on Fedora to have 32bit support. It has it's own runtimes compiled from sources. Which are maintained by the respective upstream or the community itself.

Edit: As for individual apps, often times it's the developers or who ever takes care of the faltpak. If a developers/maintainer know they require 32bit than they can do it. There is full guide on how to get this setup if distributing on flathub: https://docs.flatpak.org/en/latest/multiarch.html [External Link]

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It's not just Valve's Steam client, you know ...

Same story if you ask me. They shouldn't bee allowed to force distributions to drag around 32bit libraries.

If people would have to adopt Flatpak? ... What happened to free choice here? Why should I be forced to use it if I don't want to use it?

Never said that ppl should use Flatpaks no matter what. I brought it up as a solution to the issue and if a broader audience would be using it the whole discussion might have taken a different turn.

I did not wanted to argue away ppls freedom of choice here. If some don't like Flatpak this is fine by me. If ppl like to run 16bit OSes to run 16bit Software. Go ahead do it. In the end I am not affected by an individuals choice of software.

If flatpak does not suite the user then maybe Distrobox and Toolbox are more suitable to run 32bit Linux (or one with 32bit support) from a container on 64bit. Apparently the choice of distros supporting 32bit will shrink over time. Also not as well sandboxed as Flatpak thought but this works as well. I use it on a daily basis to run software not designed for my distribution of choice for example.

Maybe even Snapcraft has 32bit compatibility? Idk maybe someone can tell if this works.

Therefore I do not see any issues in removing 32bit support from a distro if they want to do it. As compatibility seems to be already there and in a seemingly more secure way.

In the end we all can probably agree 32bit support will vanish over time. Why not taking the opportunity to seek ways to run the legacy software in a more future proofed scenario? Instead of being required to rely on the good will of distribution to still supporting 32bit packages?

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Don't you think Flatpak will face the same problem as Ubuntu and Fedora?

I do not understand what you want to say by this? You mean removing 32bit support from flatpak?

Well if this should ever be the case. Then I would agree with all of your denying the removal of 32bit. For me Flatpak is all about compatibility. But I do not see this happening any time soon (hope this will age well). But forcing every distribution to drag around 32bit libs just for Steam ... I don't think Valve should be allowed to hold us all hostage with this.

I mean they [Valve] can do 64bit. Apple already forced them to do so for MacOS as they nuked 32bit a long time ago (With no compatibility, Linux at least has it)

If you visit Steam for Linux forums regularly, you see people having all sort of problems with Flatpak, like no access to other hard drives or the microphone not working. I'm sure this all is solvable, but it does create additional problems for people that the "pure native" (I'm missing a good expression here.) version does not have.

No surprise this is what a sandbox is suppose to do. There are indeed ways to solve this.

a) Valve to update Steam to make use of Protals or
b) To grand the missing access using Flatseal or KDEs build-in application permission tool

The first one would not just make it work more streamlined with Flaptak but also make it much more distribution and desktop environment agnostic.

While other than grand access to additional drives I never had any interferences with flatpak as a whole. Mic, Webcams, Capture cards, Stream Decks etc. do work fine though.

I think this whole discussion would be a lot more calm if ppl would have adopt Flatpak at a larger scale and therefore knew how to use it.

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How do you think Flatpak "solves" the problem of running 32 bit games? It contains the 32 bit libraries! So, the problem is not different, the libs are still needed and still need to be maintained and still need to be packaged!

Yes but the Fedora proposal was to remove 32bit from the base OS. Nobody was talking about removing 32bit from flatpak.

Therefore I do not understand why everybody freaks out here. Nobody is in fact taking the precious 32bit apps away from anyone. But instead of running them natively ppl may want to finally adopt flatpaks?

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Naw! No vehicle combat. But still a very astonishing piece of art it is. Now I need friends to play with. 😅

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I actually do not understand the arguments till this very day. I validated my previous claim on how am I running a 64bit only distro and it turned out to be true. Yet Steam works just fine even old 16bit Windows games via 32bit Wine as 64bit Wine can not emulate Win95. As well as any old unmaintained 32bit native Linux game (Unreal Gold, UT2004, The very first SDL Port of Quake called Fitz Quake just to name a few). All thanks to flatpak running either Bottles, Lutris or Steam.

I've read multiple times "Flatpak Steam has it's own set of issues": After many years running the flatpak Steam I still questioning, which are these issues everyone talks about? I am sure I must have had run across them by now shouldn't I? Yes I've read some (mean while years old news) about how the flatpak sandbox interfered with the Steam runtimes. But those where fixed long ago.

Actually, even though this is a personal perception, the Flatpak Steam worked much better than any "native" Steam ever has. Be it the *.dep shipped by Valve or any native package shipped by which ever distribution I had ran it on.

Therefore from my personal point of view. I do not understand how removing 32bit form the base OS kills gaming? It clearly does work. As well as for the other 7.42% of Linux Steam users running the distro "Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit". Which leads me to the conclusion the host does not need to still maintain 32bit libraries if flatpak seems to be capable of handling all this already?

Can some one please enlighten me. With sources / proofs preferably? I know I did not provided "proof" or sources myself. Beside not understanding the discussions.

All I can give is a list of all installed packages and the huge lack of anything "-32bit" as this is what openSUSE does label their 32bit packages: https://gist.github.com/VortexAcherontic/cc550a5b33b03c0fc7bdef1874b02947 [External Link] Especially there is a lack of 32bit nvidia driver stuff which otherwise would be vital for running 32bit games. But neither are nvidia-compute-G06-32bit, nvidia-gl-G06-32bit or nvidia-video-G06-32bit installed. As well as no libgstvulkan-1_0-0-32bit, libvulkan1-32bit or Mesa-vulkan-device-select-32bit.

Yet Steam runs fine: https://i.ibb.co/zh43QKtv/grafik.png [External Link]

It is not fair to bash Fedora or the FESCO on this proposal. The world moves on. Most 32bit software (except Steam) is probably out-dated and unmaintained anyway. Shouldn't it be the preferred approach to run them via Flatpak to have at least some sort of Sandbox they run in rather to compromise the base OS with old libraries and stuff?

Or do I fundamentally misunderstood here something? I mean it, please I'd really like to understand this.

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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.

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Doesn't look like this helps the issues I have with drivers above 550:

1. Screen tearing in VR headset.
2. Grey/white flickering in 2d games in at least Unity and Godot. No issues in 3d games though.

Could you provide some info on which games? I make heavy use of Godot (hobbyist game dev) and did not yet come across any of this. Primarily I am interested in Godot here any if it affects older version of Godot like v3 or also recent versions.

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It is kinda funny to see how the Linux press talks all about Fedora moving full on to Wayland and removing the X11 Sessions, Ubuntu and now Manjaro. Sad to see openSUSE is too small for ppl to know Aeon and Kalpa are doing this since a solid year by now and already proven that this is very well possible with no downsides for the users.

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