Quoting: Redface

Quoting: MohandevirShouldn't Canonical began to discuss this decision with the parties involved before announcing anything officially?

It's getting uglier by the hour and Canonical are looking like Cowboys in the process.

Bad project managment.

Are you sure this is not what they intended by that? They announced in the beginning of 2018 that they would finally decide mid 2019 whether to continue with the 32bit distribution or not. But apparently no one, at least not me and most other people I read posts from though it would involve dropping 32 bit libraries for 64bit systems.

Poor communication definitely. But now there are discussions about going forward.

Discussions should have started behind closed Doors with the impacted players before going forward with the decision, imo.

Seems that's not what they did...

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Quoting: sub

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: MohandevirBad project managment.

Canonical are known for that. It's not the first time :) Remember the whole Mir vs Wayland debacle? It's not far off from that.

Which is VERY unfortunate because I actually like companies trying new stuff and being courageous - so I feel a bit bad when bashing such efforts - but it was just a stupid idea and not helpful at all. :/

I know... But I can't help but feeling disapointed by such behavior. Canonical is still a high profile company, in the Linux universe ... You shouldn't have to expect that from them.

You may have the idea of exploring the possibility, but such unilateral decision is just bad business.

Sorry, Just my mindset...

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Shouldn't Canonical began to discuss this decision with the parties involved before announcing anything officially?

It's getting uglier by the hour and Canonical are looking like Cowboys in the process.

Bad project managment.

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Quoting: Redface

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: BeamboomI'll not be surprised if Canonical backs out of this decision again, seeing the reception.

Already happened:

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/06/is-ubuntu-not-dropping-32-bit-app-support-after-all [External Link]

I’m sorry that we’ve given anyone the impression that we are ‘dropping support for i386 applications‘. It is simply not the case. What we are dropping is updates to the i386 libraries, which will be frozen at the 18.04 LTS versions.

Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: BeamboomI'll not be surprised if Canonical backs out of this decision again, seeing the reception.

Already happened:

https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2019/06/is-ubuntu-not-dropping-32-bit-app-support-after-all [External Link]

I’m sorry that we’ve given anyone the impression that we are ‘dropping support for i386 applications‘. It is simply not the case. What we are dropping is updates to the i386 libraries, which will be frozen at the 18.04 LTS versions.

That is not backing out, it is a clarification of their plans. They never said that 32 bit programs would not be able tun run any more. A lot of us are worried that the new ways will be Inferior to what we have today, especially in regard to how complicated it will be for users. And I still are.

A lot of online publication and posters claimed that it would be impossible, but this is Linux not Mac or Windows so there will always be ways for users to do what they want differently than their distribution providers. Do not believe everything you read.

But distributions are about convenience, after all we could all do a Linux from scratch installation and not use any distribution after all. So if they make it a lot harder for users we should go elsewhere.

Still, it means that Canonical won't maintain it anymore... If they don't someone will have to. It will then become external to Ubuntu and will have to be added like an optional ppa (my understanding). Just another hurdle to new Linux users that want a plug&play experience.

Am I wrong?

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Totally on top of my head, but what about Clear Linux? I read that they have the Steam integration project on their side with the Solus(?) developer that created it...

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Might be too optimistic from my part, but seriously, I'm just eager to see the outcome of all this. Who knows, we might be surprised by what could be brought to the table by the "new players" that will be willing to fill the void left by Ubuntu's departure.

Canonical should remove all desktop references from their wiki. It's clearly not a target anymore. Of all the x86 platforms, desktop is the slowest to change and they have take that into account, unfortunately.

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Quoting: gojulLooks like Valve may not use a Debian-based distro : https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/155794864305471497/591834042437992448/Screenshot_20190622_053640.png [External Link]

If true, this might explain why SteamOS Clockwork is not yet a thing; Valve was probably already exploring the possibility of dropping debian as a base.

It's not a great news for newcomers, but personnally I find it exciting... New stuff to come! It could be one step backwards for a new start for Linux gaming.

This said, Pop!OS is probably going to be my choice, since they plan to keep supporting 32bit libs.

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Anyway, personnally, I'm not really worried over this one. Since I use my computer mainly for gaming, I'll wait for an official statement from Valve, regarding steam and act accordingly, if needs be. For the moment, I'm sticking to Ubuntu 18.04, it's still doing an awesome job.

The problem might get resolved in the background while we, the users, won't notice.

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Quoting: Tuxee

Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: sprocketNot really. Debian Stable and Ubuntu LTS have had roughly the same release cadence of 2 years. In fact Debian 10 is only a few weeks away.

LTS may be, but not regular Ubuntu which is more commonly used among desktop users. Ubuntu LTS is really more of a server distro, same as Debian stable.

No it is not. On all my desktops I run Ubuntu LTS. With HWE you are not missing out a lot and I wouldn't want to update my desktops every 6 months.

Just to be on the same page (bold on me):

"Furthermore, we define the LTS to be:

Enterprise Focused: We are targeting server and multiple desktop installations, where the average user is moderately risk averse.

Compatible with New Hardware: We will make point releases throughout the development cycle to provide functional support for new server and desktop hardware.

More Tested: We will shorten the development window and extend the Beta cycle to allow for more testing and bug fixing

and clearly state that it is not:

A Feature-Based Release: We will focus on hardening functionality of existing features, versus introducing new ones1, except for in the areas of Online Services and Desktop Experience2.

1. Exceptions for priority projects will be documented.
2. Because these two areas of development are relatively new, they still require new features to satisfy the original reasons for their creation

Cutting Edge: Starting with the 14.04 LTS development cycle, automatic full package import is performed from Debian unstable1

1. This is due to deploying ProposedMigration in the Ubuntu archive."

Source:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS [External Link]

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Quoting: ShmerlDidn't Valve select Debian for SteamOS? So Valve would simply swap Ubuntu with Debian as most recommended target. Quite natural to expect that.

Exactly why I said that they could offer their own desktop edition. For newbies it would be a good start since all drivers are included by default. It would have to be a little more mainlined than SteamOS proper though and stripped of all SteamOS-Compositor stuff too.

Edit1: If they could up their game, Valve could even advertise it in the Steam client (an OS for gamers, by gamers). Personnally, I'm probably going to switch to Debian with backports or Debian testing, if things get sour with Canonical, but my toughts are all about new gamers coming from Windows. They need an easy Linux solution. I think Valve is in a good position to provide that.

Edit2: I still think and hope that Canonical is just testing the waters and that it probably won't make it to 20.04. It wouldn't be the first time that they backtrack. I always stick to LTS versions with gpu driver ppa, because of this king of stuff. Never had problems this way.

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