Fedora Linux devs discuss dropping 32-bit packages - potentially bad news for Steam gamers
Fedora Linux devs discuss dropping 32-bit packages - potentially bad news for Steam gamers
We may potentially be in for some big changes in Fedora 44, with plans in place being discussed to drop 32-bit multilib / i686 packages.Liam Dawe (GamingOnLinux)
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Riskable
in reply to Nemeski • • •GenderNeutralBro
in reply to Riskable • • •I wonder how much power Valve even has here. I mean, we're talking about Windows compatibility. How many Windows games can run properly in a 64-bit WINE environment?
Dropping 32-bit support has to happen eventually, but there's bound to be collateral damage. It wasn't a painless change even on macOS, which is generally a more tightly controlled "adapt or die" platform.
potatoguy
in reply to GenderNeutralBro • • •I think Wine has had WOW support for some time and it seems it will be the default at some time (arch moving to wow64).
Edit: What is WOW64
WoW64
All transitions from Windows to Unix code go through the NT syscall
interface. This is a major milestone that marks the completion of the
multi-year re-architecturing work to convert modules to PE format and
introduce a proper boundary between the Windows and Unix worlds.
All modules that call a Unix library contain WoW64 thunks to enable calling
the 64-bit Unix library from 32-bit PE code. This means that it is possible to
run 32-bit Windows applications on a purely 64-bit Unix installation. This is
called the new WoW64 mode, as opposed to the old WoW64 mode where 32-bit
applications run inside a 32-bit Unix process.
The new WoW64 mode is not yet enabled by default. It can be enabled by passing
the --enable-archs=i386,x86_64 option to configure. This is expected to work
for most applications, but there are still some limitations, in particular:
Lack of support for 16-bit code.
Reduced OpenGL performance and lack of ARB_buffer_storage extension
support.
The new WoW64 mode finally allows 32-bit applications to run on recent macOS
versions that removed support for 32-bit Unix processes.
Wine 9.0 · wine / wine · GitLab
GitLabwho
in reply to potatoguy • • •Wine has two forms of WoW64. Old WoW64 uses 32-bit libraries.
New WoW64 (introduced in Wine 9.0) works without 32-bit libraries, but is still incomplete. It cannot yet replace old WoW64 everywhere, and even where it can, it reduces performance in some APIs. (For example, OpenGL.)
It will eventually make sense to drop the old one, but doing so now would be premature.
Quetzalcutlass
in reply to potatoguy • • •I'm curious why 16-bit support is being dropped. Too much additional codebase complexity for such a small use case, or are there technical reasons it's difficult to support in a 64-bit environment that somehow don't exist in a 32-bit one? Or is it simply not implemented yet due to a lack of dev time/interest in the feature?
I know 16-bit programs are incredibly niche these days, but I'd be way more comfortable with enterprises running their ancient software in a secure, up-to-date WINE environment as opposed to an actual Windows 3.x one with its nonexistent security. Even in an isolated VM, that kind of setup is one misconfiguration away from disaster.
MudMan
in reply to Nemeski • • •Isn't Bazzite built on Fedora Silverblue and installs the Steam Flatpak? I could take a guess.
HayadSont
in reply to MudMan • • •Kinda.
Actually no. Bazzite installs Steam from the RPM Fusion repo.
As for an attempt to shed light on why Fedora is absent from Steam's numbers, see this comment. Finally, perhaps this is worth looking into to see how big Fedora's gaming community is compared to the rest of its users.
How many Fedora Silverblue users worldwide?
Fedora DiscussionMudMan
in reply to HayadSont • • •Right, Steam is baked into Bazzite, not installed on top. I stand corrected.
The first set of numbers you link match my intuitions about what's happening to the Steam data. The second seems... less reliable, given the methodology, and don't say much about Fedora gamers in particular. The overall takeaways about the size of Fedora desktop do make sense to me, though.
To complete the cryptic "kinda" answer, because you made me look it up, their Gnome variation is built from Silverblue and they have a KDE variant built from Kinoite. Fedora Atomic either way, for our purposes here.
HayadSont
in reply to MudMan • • •MudMan likes this.
vane
in reply to Nemeski • • •Quetzalcutlass
in reply to vane • • •The Unix epoch problem is completely unrelated to a program being 32-bit or not. The architecture affects the maximum addressable memory space, not the size of individual types. You could easily define and use a 128-bit type in a 16-bit environment, for example.
The epoch problem is simply due to a bad design call a long time ago - one that proved foundational and incredibly difficult to change once it'd become an entrenched standard. They could have made timestamps 64-bit at the time, and probably would have if they'd known their work would survive the several decades it'd take for that decision to pay off.