Ubuntu 16.04 Might Be The Distribution's Last 32-Bit Release

[Prescience500]

I wonder what it will take to get game companies to port their games to naitive 64-bit. I know it's not a huge deal because there's work arounds, but you gotta figure that EVENTUALLY the 32-bit compatibility packages will be dropped. When that happens, the games you bought will stop working. Grandted, support for things like OpenGL 4 or X might be dropped first.

[dungeon]

I wonder what it will take to get game companies to port their games to naitive 64-bit. I know it's not a huge deal because there's work arounds, but you gotta figure that EVENTUALLY the 32-bit compatibility packages will be dropped. When that happens, the games you bought will stop working. Grandted, support for things like OpenGL 4 or X might be dropped first.

Opensource games are fine for porting matter, but no one can say if XYZ company want or not to port their old blob titles... only thing what users can do there is to made request for 64bit binaries for new game releases, some game makers who think about future already do that

[TheLexMachine]

I wonder what it will take to get game companies to port their games to naitive 64-bit. I know it's not a huge deal because there's work arounds, but you gotta figure that EVENTUALLY the 32-bit compatibility packages will be dropped. When that happens, the games you bought will stop working. Grandted, support for things like OpenGL 4 or X might be dropped first.

It won't take much. The GPUs from 2016 and onwards will require 64-bit OS due to the large amount of memory they will have and high-resolution displays - greater than the typical Full HD resolution - will become the norm after 2016 along with systems packing 32GB or more of DDR4 RAM. Once that happens, there will be no further titles released in 32-bit, especially since Microsoft is dumping 32-bit Windows in the near future.

[chrisb]

Yup, but they're for people very experienced with Linux (power users).

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Old hardware may still be of use. E.g. it could run a backup (or web) server (yes, I know about the Raspberry Pi). Also, there are companies with lots of old computers and no real upgrade budget.

64-bit systems use more memory then the 32-bit ones. Because of that, systems with small amounts of RAM (1 GB or 2 GB) may run slower on 64-bit. That's why I'm not using a 64-bit Ubuntu (I have only 3GB of RAM and a habit of having many firefox tabs open, which takes up lots of memory).

It depends on your application and usage, but in general 64-bit should run faster due to doubling the number of general purpose registers. I doubt your Firefox performance is memory bandwidth bound, so the slight increase in memory consumption won't affect performance unless it forces your system to start swapping.

IMHO making 32-bit PAE installs the default on Ubuntu for such a long time was a mistake (it was only end of 2013 that Ubuntu started to use 64-bit by default). PAE doesn't even work on many old systems, since it requires motherboard support and most PC manufacturers never cared to implement or test it.

The main problem with continuing to support 32-bit in any distribution is that there are very few people are still using it for modern distributions - most people with 32-bit hardware are running XP or older Linux distributions and have no intention of ever upgrading. Fewer users means less testing. There are basically zero developers still using x86-32 desktops, and as someone pointed out on LKML the last time this was brought up, there are no professional Linux kernel developers still using x86-32 kernels, everyone is now on x86-64, so it's kind of inevitable that as the number of developers and users fall off a cliff, bitrot will set in and nobody will care.

[chrisb]

The other big problem with supporting old x86-32 hardware on modern desktop distributions is that the GPU drivers aren't supported any more. Nvidia and ATI have dropped support for old GPUs in their proprietary drivers, so unless you have a GPU that is still supported by an open source driver, you will have no acceleration and a painful desktop experience. Support for SiS graphics got broken in Xorg some time back and doesn't look like it will ever get fixed. Open source ATI or Intel is probably the best bet, but anything else is unlikely to work. Debian already dropped support for many old GPUs a while ago.

[kneekoo]

It's *also* about RAM

I'm surprised to see a lot of people so focused on the "old" 32-bit architecture but fail so much at noticing that we still have brand new PCs sold with 2-4GB of RAM, PCs that cannot be upgraded. There are plenty of notebooks having a fixed amount of RAM and they are great for people with regular needs but they are also a pain if you're trying to multi-task in a 64-bit environment. Browsing with only 5 tabs can easily take up to 1GB RAM, especially when you have one facebook tab or some other "web 2.x" content such as the e-mail, an online shop, YouTube etc. Then we have some office app, a PDF reader, maybe some printing, music player (radio or local), the update manager that sits there in the background, the bluetooth, network manager, maybe an instant messaging client and so on. Nothing out of the ordinary. God forbid they also want to play some facebook/casual games, right?

64-bit apps require more RAM, so running at least 3-4 desktop apps when one of them is a browser... that's not easy for systems with 2GB of RAM. They will soon swap and that sucks. I'm not saying Canonical or whoever else should or must keep the 32-bit branch indefinitely. It's their choice. The reality is there's new hardware that people will use with whatever they find working properly for them. And it will certainly not be Ubuntu after some point. A dual/quad-core Haswell won't be nowhere near irrelevant 2 years from now.

Yes, I know the OEMs should shoot themselves for designing PCs with a fixed amount of RAM, when the quantity is less or equal to 4GB. Yes, I know people should be more informed about the technology they spend their money on. It's not even about money in the end. We know a lot of people (if not the most) get PCs based on some tech-irrelevant random criteria. Sometimes because they don't care enough, sometimes because the sales representatives don't care enough and they just want to sell whatever they have. And yes, finally, sometimes it's also about money. But when we will have new tech with RAM limitations we should seriously consider if 64-bit-only actually makes sense so soon. Haswell PCs will be great for 3-4 more years the least. But then there's Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge that are also great and still kicking. What about those?

The bottom line is whoever decides to give up on the 32-bit architecture as soon as 2016 will lose users or their users' experience with the 64-bit offer will be less than ideal. And yes, there's still (actually) old hardware like P3/P4/Athlon/Duron/etc that still work for tens of thousands of people who can't afford newer PCs. The modern web and apps are not exactly for their PCs, but if the main distros give up on 32-bit, most of the downstream will give up as well. So these users will end up having some niche distros, some probably poorly maintained or discontinued after a few years. Their GNU/Linux experience will suffer from this because of some apparently beaureaucratic decisions. Popcon is not relevant enough, because the number of people actually using it is not relevant enough.

I just hope the decision makers will rethink their strategies. I know it takes more work to provide 32-bit operating systems, but it's been done so far. Is it worth reducing the choice so drastically?

[dungeon]

Is it worth reducing the choice so drastically?

It is not drastic, Ubuntu will not provide just install images, but 32bit software will be there . Drastic in my POV is: droping completely all 32bit software after 16.04, but that is not the case ... it is just clear sign for Ubuntu users that 32bit became step by step abandonware .

[kneekoo]

It is not drastic, Ubuntu will not provide just install images, but 32bit software will be there . Drastic in my POV is: droping completely all 32bit software after 16.04, but that is not the case ... it is just clear sign for Ubuntu users that 32bit became step by step abandonware .

That's oversimplifying in my opinion. However, if Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will have support for 32-bit architectures it will probably be enough for people to start worring about their needs and give them a 5-year window (until 2021) to get better PCs if they want Ubuntu. As for other distros, the decision makers should really look into the hardware market. It's far from "old hardware only".

[dungeon]

That's oversimplifying in my opinion. However, if Ubuntu 16.04 LTS will have support for 32-bit architectures it will probably be enough for people to start worring about their needs and give them a 5-year window (until 2021) to get better PCs if they want Ubuntu. As for other distros, the decision makers should really look into the hardware market. It's far from "old hardware only".

It is not a joke, i know people still writing software for 8bit Commodore 64 and there is nothing that can stop group of people doing that That said upstream and main linux distros care *only* by majorty, not much about minority . In 2020. i guess there will be less then 5% users of pure i386 distros, and there is not any sign 32bit x86 will revamp. At that time 64bit and arm will be in majority, that is what is/will be good supported . And i386 will take place in Debian ports for people who really need it, so you can took packages from there - nothing to loose .

[Baconmon]

I think what it really boils down to is this: People have different opinions on WHERE to draw the line as far as 32-bit support is concerned..
Every one thinks 32-bit should end at SOME point in time, right?.. I mean, no one expects 32-bit to last for eternity..
But, some people think the line should be drawn NOW, and other people think it should be drawn 5 or 10 years from now..

You need to keep in mind that there will ALWAYS be some one still using old or ancient hardware...
...but we can't expect maintainers of linux to keep supporting ancient stuff just because Bob in his basement some where is still using 16-bit processor some where.. That would be ridiculous in this day and age..

So yes, there are still quite a few people using 32-bit systems still these days... And they still have plenty of time, especially if they use things like debian.. But they don't have eternity.. At some point in time (maybe 2050 or some thing), they will find them selves in a situation where they will be forced to upgrade their ancient computer because the rest of the world isn't supporting that old system any more.. As sad as it is, he will have to throw that old crappy system in to the garbage can.. Good riddance..

P.S.: All of my computers have been 64-bit for a long time, so I couldn't care less about the demise of poor old 32-bitness..