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Ubuntu Compromises on 32-Bit App Support
Canonical, the developer of Ubuntu, has backtracked on an earlier announcement that Ubuntu 19.10 will no longer update 32-bit packages and applications, announcing today that Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 will support select 32-bit apps.
The news follows Valve and the developers of Wine, an open source compatibility layer for running Windows apps on other operating systems, saying they would stop supporting Ubuntu completely.
[...] In response, Canonical said it will work with select developers of 32-bit apps to ensure these apps continue to work on Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04. However, these apps may only work under more stringent requirements, such as running them in Ubuntu containers, something that may not appease Steam and Wine developers.
Long-term, Canonical still thinks 32-bit apps need to go, since most are not updated and present a security risk.
Older: Steam is dropping support for Ubuntu, but not Linux entirely
Steam ending support for Ubuntu over 32-bit compatibility
(Score: 4, Informative) by Pino P on Tuesday June 25 2019, @03:47PM (15 children)
The disagreement of the featured article is not about abandoning 32-bit machines. It's about abandoning 32-bit applications on 64-bit machines. Many of these applications were published by companies that are long out of business.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 25 2019, @04:00PM (4 children)
I think someone did not realize how important 32 bit executables remain, even on 64 bit hardware. Even if the OS only supports 64 bit hardware.
I wonder how long 32 bit executables will remain important.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @04:37PM (1 child)
For as long as desktop's use X86 compatible processors.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @09:56PM
and vice versa
(Score: 2) by SomeGuy on Tuesday June 25 2019, @04:57PM
Just a reminder that Windows 10 32-bit still exists (and even runs DOS and Windows 3.1 binaries!), and likely users of Windows 7 32-bit (which was the most common the first couple years 7 was out) got automatically "upgraded" to this version. Also Windows 10 64-bit does a surprisingly good job of running Windows 32-bit programs that will be around until the end of time. Many new Windows programs are still 32-bit in order to ensure compatiblity across the different Windows versions.
I have not heard of support for these ending any time soon. Although I never get the memos.
In this case, this is probably where the issue lies since they are trying to run Widows binaries.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Tuesday June 25 2019, @05:09PM
"Important" begs definitions of what that means. Important to whom? Important how much? Obviously Canonical didn't think it important initially. If we didn't have Wine or Steam, would this have gone through?
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @04:57PM (4 children)
Running 32 bit apps on amd64 isn't hard? So if the software is open source, compile it to 64 bit, otherwise let the user run what he wants outside the control of the distro.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @10:19PM (3 children)
"Compile as 64 bit" isn't an option. Depending on how old the code is you'll end up having to rewrite it from scratch due to bitness-specific algorithms and hackery. Blind 64-bit recompiles are a recipe for disaster.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @10:49PM (2 children)
OK, so let the distro provide the ia32 libs and loader and you're set to run your special app from /usr/local/bin.
Why should a distro need to allocate resources for a platform that is going away, or on software that no one is caring to maintain? We've been through this before, with ppc, alpha etc getting dropped by distros. Although my most modern Linux install currently is a DEC Alpha installed with unofficial Debian.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26 2019, @08:36AM
For as long as modern cpus are 100% 32 bit compatible the platform ain't going away. Deal with it. We're not talking about some archaic legacy stuff here. It wasn't a problem maintaining compatibility before the agile idiocracy took hold, it shouldn't be an issue now. Maybe they'd have less trouble maintaining things if they didn't try to rapid release major versions.
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Friday July 05 2019, @05:44AM
Canonical was trying to deallocate resources for even providing the ia32 libs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 25 2019, @09:26PM (1 child)
What I never understood, though the whole debate, was why someone couldn't just make a debian package with all the 32 bit libraries and install it if you want it? Like GIMP, and so many of the other "supported, but not installed by default" packages in Ubuntu?
All this rage and angst over whether or not the libraries ship in the default base configuration? How about the "minimal" desktop option - do they need to be in there too?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 26 2019, @02:30AM
Maintaining this package to keep it in sync with security updates and changes to the kernel Direct Rendering Manager costs time. Buying engineers' time to do this costs money.
More like whether Canonical makes the libraries available at all.
(Score: 3, Informative) by stretch611 on Tuesday June 25 2019, @11:52PM (2 children)
Actually, many of these applications are still actively maintained right now.
The biggest 2 applications are WINE and the Steam Client.
A large number of games also require 32-bit libraries and are unlikely to be updated.
Also, a Canonical Developer Tries Running GOG Games On 64-Bit-Only Ubuntu 19.10 Setup [phoronix.com] and failed miserably. Which also points out that nobody even attempted to see the real impact of this decision before making it.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by Pino P on Wednesday June 26 2019, @02:34AM
Wine is available in 32-bit and 64-bit editions. In theory, developers of 32-bit Windows applications that run in 32-bit Wine could recompile them as 64-bit Windows applications that run in 64-bit Wine. Valve could recompile the Steam client as a 64-bit application, and developers of games available through Steam could recompile them as well. However, many Windows applications run through Wine and games available through Steam are unmaintained.
In theory, a game's developer could commission a 64-bit version of each library used by the game from the developer of said library. In practice, many of these libraries are unmaintained.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 26 2019, @08:59AM
Newer games have 64-bit versions, or sometimes only 64-bit versions, on GOG too.
Not that it'll help old ones.