Ubuntu Developer Talks Down Impact Of 32-Bit Changes For Ubuntu 19.10

[Danielsan]

While I think the Canonical solution (containers and snap) is still interesting, they changed their plan:
https://blog.ubuntu.com/2019/06/24/s...-and-20-04-lts

That makes sense, Ubuntu raising up the fuss created an impulse toward the right path...

[Danny3]

You should read this to yourself to understand how silly and foolish you sound!!! You want to buy state of the art high performance hardware yet you are worried about running old game titles that are well past their expiration date. I don’t get it really.

I want to buy state of the art high performance hardware for software that needs that like latest games with high quality graphics.
I want to play old games, because I like them, they bring me enjoyment, even though they might not have be ste quality graphics anymore.
Old games don't have an expiration date. they work just fine without any bugs or none that I found.
I payed them, I enjoy them. They are Linux native and 32 bit and will never be updated, but why should they be updated if they work just fine exactly as they are?
The only thing that will expire is the operating system, in this case Ubuntu 19.10 will already come expired.
I'm not giving up the software that I bought and brings me joy because one distribution decided to be insane.
So, for me it's clear, either Ubuntu rolls back this imbecile decision or I'm gone to a sane distribution.
I'm really tired of Microsoft's puppet!

[ElectricPrism]

1. Some random facts: Microsoft are trying to hurt Linux by creating the WSL as a means to make Windows into an OS that "has it all", thus rendering Linux redundant even for server management (the main market segment that really hurts Microsoft atm when it comes to their antagonism with Linux); Canonical is in a business partnership with Microsoft and are being used as the model distro on which the WSL runs; deprecating x86_32 libraries without even as much as consulting Valve first shows that even if Canonical are not acting directly on behalf of Microsoft's interests, at the very least they don't feel any need at all to consult and/or warn their Linux compatriots when it comes to matters that could seriously impact Linux as a whole and even worse, that they have no qualms at all about indirectly hurting Linux's interests in favor of Microsoft's.

2. I've been playing games exclusively on Linux for the past year or so and, barring some newer titles that have either WMF dependencies or some specific quirk (usually older games), and also the fact that's there is some overhead that hurts performance when a game is run through WINE, it's been an absolute blast. So much so that it's the first time since forever that I have not had any real need to dual boot. As for the rest: duplicate libraries, if they do exist, are of no concern to an end user like yourself, it's the system's job to know how to work with them; "tricks" could mean anything, I can't know what you're referring to; environment variables are part and parcel of the Linux ecosystem, if you don't like them then you're not really fit to be running Linux (and I'm not being elitist, merely pragmatic); and command line arguments on Steam, that's up to the game vendors to decide whether to use them or not. Finally, you lost your steam configuration folder due to cleanup and you're blaming Linux? I fail to see how that's anything other than your own fault.

Well put. Clearly Canonical are putting their contractual partners first (ie Microsoft) and have no problem hurt Linux by co-producing WSL/WLS2 and dropping vital 32-bit libraries which will effect 7 years of work by Valve to get 10,000+ games running on Linux.

If the grumpy old man wants to game on his Atari 2600 be my guest, but going on a mini rant about how gaming on linux sucks because it installed extra libs is the weakest argument I've ever heard -- like anyone who plays games gives a single fuck about extra libs, if so they must suffer from OCD or are trying to install linux games on some kind of mainframe where games should not go XD. In all consumer use-cases duplicity is defacto. Stable Old Deps are part of Flatpak, Snap, Runtimes, etc... You don't hear the old man complaining about installing 10 versions of Microsoft Visual C++ or Direct X to be compatible with apps and games on his beloved Windows 10 machine, neih.

[Nocifer]

Sorry, but non of this is a fact. It is all about your assumptions and intuitions. Unless you work either in Canonical or Microsoft, you can't possibly know whether Canonical is acting directly on behalf of Microsoft's interest at all.

1) Microsoft trying to forcefully barge themselves in Linux's territory by creating WSL is not a fact?
2) Canonical having a business partnership with Microsoft and Ubuntu being used as the model distro for WSL is not a fact?
3) Canonical not consulting or even warning Valve about their plans to literally break their business model apart (gaming is still largely a 32-bit industry) is not a fact?

Are you sure you understand what the word "fact" means?

I am glad you enjoy Linux, I still think Linux is not meant to play games. You are probably losing plenty of performance and not using GPU drivers. If you are running Nvidia, then good luck. On each game, I have at least 2 or 3 variables in the game's command line to disable this or that in order to not launch the game into a black screen.

Yes, I've already mentioned the performance overhead, but that's acceptable to me since I willingly use an emulation layer; it's definitely worth it as a trade-off for not having to boot Windows whenever I want to have some gaming fun time between work sessions.

What's more, if you think "Linux is not meant to play games" then you're plain wrong. Linux is not meant for anything or nothing, Linux is a tool like everything else, and it can be made to do anything as long as people devote their time and effort into making it so. You know what, don't take my word for it, just ask Valve and the Proton and DXVK devs.

Also, I'm running Nvidia with the proprietary drivers and I don't have any problems running almost every game out there (that's not WMF dependent) without any variables or messing with the command line to disable stuff. I just have a single, well-maintained Wine prefix and I just install -> run -> have fun (granted, with the occasional hiccup of course, but no one said that the state of gaming on Linux is perfect yet).

As a software developer and long term linux desktop user, other than the filesystem performance and the amazing terminal and shell utilities, Windows has the rest. Stability, commercial software support, games and official drivers. Working from windows only makes me miss how fast I compile software and how much I can customize the desktop environment, and that's it. PowerShell (The one in Github) is more than enough for now, WSL for the rest, VM for some other things. And I have all the games without having a Dual-boot setup wasting double OS storage.

Lol. Alright, let's see:

Stability: nope, sorry, Linux is stable as f**k. Only recently has Microsoft finally managed to match Linux in reliability with Windows 10, and even that had severe teething problems in the first couple of years of its existence.

Software support and games: that has nothing to do with the capabilities or the quality of Linux. What's more, this is one of the main reasons that there has been so much backlash over the subject we're supposed to be discussing, i.e. the deprecation or not of 32-bit libraries. So let's see, on the one hand you're PRO deprecating 32-bit libraries, and on the other hand you're using "software support" and "[lack of] games" as arguments AGAINST Linux. My best hope at this point is that you simply don't understand how crucial the 32-bit libraries are for INCREASING software support and games on the Linux platform; the worst case scenario is that you're just being a hypocrite.

Official drivers: yet again an issue stemming from the various vendors not bothering to support Linux and not from a flaw of Linux itself, but at least nowadays the drivers that count have Linux versions, so nothing much to worry about anymore. Still, you got complaints? Go pester the hardware vendors.

Powershell & WSL: lol mate, just lol. I'm beginning to wonder, why are we even having this conversation?

VM for running games: LOL. Seriously, you're complaining about the loss of performance when using Wine, and the next minute you're advocating for the usage of a VM? Really now?

[Luke_Wolf]

Wel actually the most time is spend waiting for memory access. Thats why 32 bit apps can be much faster than 64bit apps.

To try and understand what I am going on about, look at this clip and forward to 30min 30s:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX0ItVEVjHc

Edit:
32bit has better cache hit ratio than 64bit.
As you can (hopefully) see from that clip. This can be HUGE for certain work loads.

Outside of microbenchmarks, toys, and things that aren't complex enough to care? No not at all actually. You see... while it's true that RAM is slower than cache, want to know what even in the best case (using the boards AMD will release on 7/7 and the PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs to be released that same day) is 5x slower than RAM and in the worst case (HDDs) 250x slower? Storage. Want to know what is 200x slower in the general best case (Gigabit Internet) and 40,000x in the case of bad rural areas (5Mbps)? Networks. But hey... there's something even slower... Users. All real world programs that would care have to spend their time talking to 1 or more of the aforementioned. Single shot console applications are small enough they could be using 128-bit pointers and it wouldn't effect anything.

That said, sure at the end of the day fitting in the cache better does help, but you want to know what hurts performance more than that helps? Putting that size limitation on the address space for my game. Why? Well instead of being able to cache my assets in memory I'm now having to hit the disk. Ouch. Similarly anyone doing real work with a computer: development, video editing, etc is going to get hit badly by that.

[oiaohm]

There is only a 32-bit installer for the 64-bit edition ("AdobePhotoshop20-mul_x64.zip"). And this proves that you are a pathetic troll!

https://www.playonlinux.com/es/app-3489-Adobe_Photoshop_CC_2019.html

$ file Set-up.exe
Set-up.exe: PE32 executable (GUI) Intel 80386, for MS Windows
$ wine Set-up.exe
wine: Bad EXE format for Z:\home\scx\software\wine\apps\adobe_creative_cloud\AdobePhotoshop20-mul_x64\Set-up.exe.

No that is adobe for you. I told you that you need to log into your account to get the download. The one with the 32 bit install is branded possible pirate. Direct downloading out the adobe application storage using someone else link is not a good idea.

[Luke_Wolf]

Sorry, but non of this is a fact. It is all about your assumptions and intuitions. Unless you work either in Canonical or Microsoft, you can't possibly know whether Canonical is acting directly on behalf of Microsoft's interest at all.

Based on Canonical's history, as I stated before... Microsoft has nothing to do with it. Apple on the other hand has everything to do with it because Canonical has always chased Apple's coat tails and Apple will be removing 32-bit mode in their next version of macOS.

[smitty3268]

People are still publishing 32-bit software?

What is this... the 1980s?

johnc

Official X.org Fanboy

Ahh, the irony.

[smitty3268]

It's really kind of sad how many people just instinctively try to blame Microsoft for every thing that happens they don't like.

[oiaohm]

It's really kind of sad how many people just instinctively try to blame Microsoft for every thing that happens they don't like.

In some ways some of this problem is Microsoft fault. Microsoft could have made if a 32 bit program installed a 64 binary that 64 binary was classed as malware and deleted. If that had happened by this point we would have had more 64 bit programs with 64 bit installers so making 32bit get close to end of life lot less of a problem.