Intel 32bit packages on Ubuntu from 19.10 onwards

[chanath]

You can’t have the cake and eat it. You run old apps on older OSs on older hardware. If you still have a Commodore or an Atari around, and have enough patience , you can still run pretty old games.

[fiftynine]

I don’t even have a 32 bit device for a decade or so

Mind sharing your phone history for ten years?

You can’t have the cake and eat it.

With linux and ubuntu, I’ve had the cake and eaten it too.

[tatsu]

you really need to contact valve directly.

webnews completely blew this out of proportion with a landslide of article and what started out as a provokative tweet they were willing to backpedal on if they saw you backpedaled too became a public fact.

You guys need to come to an agreement and quick. If you loose steam, you loose all of your desktop userbase like that.

And I don’t wanna hear “We don’t care”. having geeks use a distro for their desktop is how it ends up being recommended by that geek (who’s also a sysadmin) as the choice of server OS for a massive server farm.

[chanath]

Mind sharing your phone history for ten years?

Aha, a mobile phone? I don’t have an Ubuntu phone, but Nexus 6, which is 64 bit. I believe the OS is also 64 bit, Android Pie.

If Ubuntu is going only 64 bit, I am all for it. It’ll be a waste of resources to stay with the dying 32 bit stuff. All Linux distros would leave 32 bit in time, in the very near future, if they already hadn’t. I think 128bit is around the corner.

[MarcoGG]

You run old apps on older OSs on older hardware

Sure, you do that when you don’t have an abstraction layer that let you run those apps, but this is not the case.

I think that at this point you definitely understood that not having i386 libs affects AMD64 applications in wine too, not to mention that many people reported some problems with proprietary hardware drivers. So, stop burying your head in the sand and start understanding others peoples requirements as it’s quite evident that some i386 libraries are required by many users, so their support totally worth’s it

[MarcoGG]

I think 128bit is around the corner.

Yes, definitely it is…

[drnoob13]

Hi Will Cooke,

Thanks for the update. I’m glad you guys at Canonical made an effort to respond to the community’s feedback.

Best regards

[popey]

[dfl]

A wise decision. Glad to see developers are listening. This experience also shows, ironical as it may seem, that Ubuntu is very much loved and needed in this world. Yes, on desktops if you can believe it. Keep on the good work. And please post if there is some way I (and probably others) can help in you efforts.

[chanath]

I think that at this point you definitely understood that not having i386 libs affects AMD64 applications in wine too,

Wine is not for Linux. Wine is for Windows, so it doesn’t matter what effects Wine. What Wine actually says is, “See, how lovely these Windows apps are!”

[warutel]

The thing is, all the app developers would have to move to 64 bit, or lose business.

A lot of old software (including games) cannot be recompiled to 64-bit. Their developers may not be around anymore. And even if they are, sometimes it is not trivial to recompile for 64-bit. Yet people want to use the software/games they like and there is no technical reason why they shouldn’t be able to.

You use an older OS for that. Ubuntu can’t stop developing, just to keep old apps, devices going. Everyone knew 32 bit is going away, a long time. Also, when Windows pulls the plug, all 32bit software have to move to 64bit or close shop.

There is no need to use an older OS at all. If Ubuntu feels it is a financial burden to support 32-bit software, they should simply let a third-party or the community run the 32-bit repository. And I doubt Windows stops supporting WoW64 in the next decade.

[MarcoGG]

Wine is a Linux application (in this case) and is an example of what will be affected by the changes proposed in this thread.

Don’t know from where did you get such phrase, but what we should care is what Ubuntu users needs. And if Wine is a important application for them (in the same way as a printer driver), then any change in the system that could break it should be think twice (just like Canonical is doing).

Told you before and will tell you again: many people of the community have different requirements than you, try to understand them before posting pointless statements.

[warutel]

There is real risk to anybody who is running a body of software that gets little testing. The facts are that most 32-bit x86 packages are hardly used at all. That means fewer eyeballs, and more bugs. Software continues to grow in size at the high end, making it very difficult to even build new applications in 32-bit environments. You’ve heard about Spectre and Meltdown – many of the mitigations for those attacks are unavailable to 32-bit systems.

I think this misses the point. People running 32-bit software that for some reason is not offered in 64-bits is not expecting security nor testing. Those concerns do not even apply in the majority of cases, because in most cases it is non-networked software or they have not had any changes/updates for years (so holes are assumed to exist).

I think the majority of people do not care about 32-bit applications from the Ubuntu repository, but about 32-bit libraries, to be able to run third-party software.

[chanath]

Wine is a important application for them…

To run Windows apps in Linux, right? Does that help Linux distros? Ppl are still using Windows apps with Wine in non-proprietary Linux distros. Existence of Wine is to prove that Windows apps are better, or at least give that feeling. No, Linux distros shouldn’t help to grow an app, that helps to advertise a proprietary OS. Linux distros should be used to run specifically Linux apps, not a competitors apps.

[isantop]

To run Windows apps in Linux, right? Does that help Linux distros? Ppl are still using Windows apps with Wine in non-proprietary Linux distros. Existence of Wine is to prove that Windows apps are better, or at least give that feeling. No, Linux distros shouldn’t help to grow an app, that helps to advertise a proprietary OS. Linux distros should be used to run specifically Linux apps, not a competitors apps.

This is an incredibly misguided view on the situation. Without the ability to run mission-critical applications in Wine, people would simply give up and use Windows instead. It was like that before Wine compatibility was as good as it is today.

[chanath]

Without the ability to run mission-critical applications in Wine, people would simply give up and use Windows instead.

That’s not the problem of GNU/Linux distros. Wine’s existence doesn’t help Linux. It just stops development. It would’ve been better, if ppl forked that mission-critical app to Linux, or created a better one, rather than finding ways to use Windows apps in Linux. I never used Wine, and will ever do that, mission-critical or not. I strongly think Wine is a hindrance, and I’ll won’t change that thought.

Would you ever see an Apple executive using a Samsung, or Huawei? Or the Mercedes top executive coming to work in a Ford?

[MarcoGG]

Does that help Linux distros?

Yes

Ppl are still using Windows apps with Wine in non-proprietary Linux distros.

You may want to create a thread so Ubuntu removes all proprietary software then. Starting from Nvidia binary blobs that were added in 19.10 iso

Existence of Wine is to prove that Windows apps are better, or at least give that feeling

Writing code for multiple OS requires some extra work but not having some applications in our system is 99% of the time completely unrelated with a technical requirement. So, stating that the lack of support is due that Linux is “worst” than Windows is a complete bias.

You’re fighting for a philosophy of your own, completely unrelated with Ubuntu or this thread…

[chanath]

You’re fighting for a philosophy of your own, completely unrelated with Ubuntu or this thread…

I strongly think Ubuntu should drop support for 32bit software and get on with 64bit. There’s no future for 32bit any more. Ubuntu doesn’t have resources to waste either.

[flagrama]

Would you ever see an Apple executive using a Samsung, or Huawei? Or the Mercedes top executive coming to work in a Ford?

Except this isn’t about what the executives are doing. It’s about what the users are doing. I drive whatever I need when I need to. If you tried to force me to use a specific car there are times I won’t actually be able to use it due to various reasons.

[MarcoGG]

You know, I normally read such statements from Windows users when a Linux user request a game dev to bring their game to our OS. Weird, doesn’t it?

There may no be future for 32bit (i386), but there is a huge past and a big number of users that requires support, so it isn’t a waste (and this was said so many times here… you may want to reread the thread at this point).