Quoting: GuestThey DID talk about it before and my wild guess is at least Valve took notice of it. Hence their quick declaration afterwards with no much visible bargaining.

Possible Valve was aware and could not change their mind. There is this mailing list post from a year ago that outline this plan, someone on reddit just mentioned it: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2018-May/040348.html?_ga=2.61098156.1624633425.1561246225-23245439.1561246225 [External Link]

This should have been made a lot more public, it reminds me of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy where the announcement of the plan to bulldozer the main characters house was buried in the cellar of the townhall. He could just have objected to it in time.

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Quoting: Mohandevir

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...

Nope they didnt. The could also have done this open, present this as a proposal, and with a longer timeframe than 4 months to implement and test it. And then let various parties come with their inputs.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: liamdaweSounds like Wine still won't work: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/i386-architecture-will-be-dropped-starting-with-eoan-ubuntu-19-10/11263/121?u=liamdawe [External Link]

It's good that he is highlighting the problem with their proposed plan:

So the solutions proposed in [4] like containers and snaps based on 18.04 will not fully work.

That was quite obvious.

You should have put the previous sentence in too " 18.04 is already too old to fully support current Wine with (all) current features. " That means 18.04 is too old, and that will also be a problem for other programs.

It is possible to add PPAs in a container, but this comes down too again that the new ways probably will be way more complicated than we have now.

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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.

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Quoting: liamdawe

Quoting: EikeWhy did they test games without 32 bit libs if they never intended to remove them?

As their communication, was obviously rather poor even in their own ranks.

This was obviously not run through a marketing department first, else the misunderstanding about that they would make it impossible to run 32bit programs would not have arisen, and the clarification would not have come as a surprise for those that believed that.

I just fear now that they will be even less open in the future about their coming plans and have marketing people going over all the Canonical employed developer write on their public development boards and elsewhere.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: Schattenspiegelhttps://twitter.com/Plagman2/status/1142262103106973698
Oh dear... this will get interesting

I think people haven't noticed this comment or it would be seeing a bit more discussion.

Do you mean where he writes that Valve will nbot support Ubuntu 19.10 and newer anymore? There are over 200 comments at GOLs article about that: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/valve-looking-to-drop-support-for-ubuntu-1910-and-up-due-to-canonicals-32bit-decision.14421

Or is there something new from Valve?

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Quoting: Mohandevir

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?

They will maintain 18.04 for 3 more years, so also if one gets it from a LXD container, snap or flatpak. But after that not any more unless they put the needed 32 bit libraries in the AMD64 repositories like they already do for 32bit glibc and plan for the proprietary nvidia drivers. But who knows if they will do that.

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I just copy what I wrote earlier in one of the other threads:

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.

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Quoting: Shmerl

32-bit mesa will be available in the Ubuntu 18.04 repository. Note that mesa already gets updates in 18.04 which track the versions from later Ubuntu releases, as part of hardware enablement. If incompatibilities are introduced beyond 20.04 (which is the cutoff for hardware enablement backports for 18.04), we will need to address them on a case-by-case basis.

That doesn't sound reassuring. Why create a problem that needs to be "addressed on case by case basis"? It will horrendously complicate things for those who want to build things themselves.

I so far don't see Ubuntu remaining a good option for gamers.

Yeah, they should do the same for 32bit Mesa as for the proprietary Nvidia driver, make them available in the AMD64 repository (or keep the needed packages in i386 and just drop the rest, no one needs a 32bit vim in a 64bit system after all)

And if they go through with removing the i386 repositories then package the libraries needed by Steam and Wine in AMD64, this should cover a lot more programs like GOG games too then.

The LXD containers can then be used by Enterprises to deliver legacy programs to their users

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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.

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