Fedora Users: What i686 Packages Do You Still Use?

[chithanh]

Somebody is really using Acrobat? Wow...

You'd be surprised at the number of PDFs with XFA forms still around.

The FOSS situation for XFA is not completely bad as it used to be, but still far from acceptable

[STiAT]

Steam. But I could live with running that as flatpak.

[Adarion]

Can't say much about Fedora but there are still plenty of useful systems out there, besides, there is binary software (that will likely never be recompiled) that needs some x86_32 ABI, mostly games but maybe also some "professional" program.
It is like intel trying to get rid of MMX... it so deeply rooted now in everything, for it was around for so long and spread in the x86 world, simply all software expects it to be there. So you can't really get rid of it.
It is possible to run amd64 code only, yes, but there will always be some parts which rely on i386/i486/i686 libs and you can't have those then, or you have to start actually emulating x86_32.

[wertigon]

Can't say much about Fedora but there are still plenty of useful systems out there, besides, there is binary software (that will likely never be recompiled) that needs some x86_32 ABI, mostly games but maybe also some "professional" program.

[...]

you can't have those then, or you have to start actually emulating x86_32.

Hmm, but seriously - what would be so bad about running legacy code in an emulation layer? Computers should be fast enough these days to give a performant enough x86 emulation through QEmu or something, for those that need it.
For most software it should be dead simple to create a 500 MB minimal 32 bit image that is tailor made for each specific application, run that through QEmu, and voila. For games and other low latency applications, some caveats might appear though.

This also goes to show that having access to business critical source code is extremely important.

[Guest]

As the article mentions, I only use whatever Steam and/or Wine requires for i686. Steam can possibly be flatpak'd, but I still need Wine.

[MadCatX]

Steam and Wine dependencies which is quite a bit of stuff, actually.

[oiaohm]

As the article mentions, I only use whatever Steam and/or Wine requires for i686. Steam can possibly be flatpak'd, but I still need Wine.

Steam and Wine dependencies which is quite a bit of stuff, actually.

Steam has steam runtime and can run under flatpak. Steam running under flatpak does not need the host distribution to provide 32bit libraries. And it is possible for the steam runtime in future for 32 bit to be like full flatpak runtime so not requiring host distribution to provide libraries for 32 bit.

Wine at this stage requires 32 bit libraries. But a lot of the work converting more and more of wine to PE libraries is prep work form https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover The hangover project work. Yes the result of this work long term is wine not need 32 bit libraries from the host distribution either.

Lot of this is a matter of time. The reality is the need for 64 bit host Linux distribution providing 32 bit libraries is disappearing. Its more a question how fast is this disappearing.

Yes the wine hangover work merged mainline into wine will result in 32 bit program using 64 libraries for items like vulkan and opengl. This does ask the question if libcapsule like shims to thunk from 32 bit to 64 bit are in fact possible with practical overhead.

The realities of containers does ask the question if host distributions on 64 bit systems really do need 32 bit libraries. Yes the Linux kernel ideally will still supporting naively running 32 bit binaries but that could be all that is really required in a few years.

Reality going forwards we may have just two providers of 32 bit runtimes for 64 bit Linux distributions going forwards being the freedesktop runtime used by flathub and the steam runtime from valve.

[MadCatX]

Steam has steam runtime and can run under flatpak. Steam running under flatpak does not need the host distribution to provide 32bit libraries. And it is possible for the steam runtime in future for 32 bit to be like full flatpak runtime so not requiring host distribution to provide libraries for 32 bit.

Flatpaked Steam has various annoying implications such as using Mesa from Flatpak. Depending on what GPU you have, this may not be an option for some people.

Wine at this stage requires 32 bit libraries. But a lot of the work converting more and more of wine to PE libraries is prep work form https://github.com/AndreRH/hangover The hangover project work. Yes the result of this work long term is wine not need 32 bit libraries from the host distribution either.

The README on GitHub specifically states "6) Performance Don't expect this to be fast." so this will not be an option for most people even when it is ready.

[skeevy420]

I use 32-bit libraries for Steam and my Brother printer driver. I'm not a Fedora user though.

Came to say something similar. If it wasn't for Steam/Games/Wine my CPU's architecture would be irreverent (something, something X32). Also not a Fedora user, though I've been known to run it from time to time.

[willmore]

Just did a query. Looks like 194 of them. Looks like wine, steam, bunch of multimedia stuff. Not sure why all of it's installed. This machine has been around for a long time and may have aquired cruft it doesn't need long term.