openSUSE Is Still Looking For Users To Step Up And Maintain 32-bit x86 Support

[AlanTuring69]

Nice to see the continued deprecation of Intel platforms in favor of RISC-based ones.

To the steam thing it´s not realy their fault that steam still has a 32bit launcher it´s the game industries fault, cause games still use 32 bit code, and cause anti cheat engines still use 32 bit code.

I remember SWTOR omfg i was so fucking angry that it was 32bit, you had a render process that used up 2048mb, then you had a game engine process that used another 1-2gb, and then you had a coordinating process that used another 200-500 mb, just to bring together what you see on the screen what you input and what your char does.

Why was it so complicated ? because it was 32bit in a time when 4-8gb ram where already a thing, they had to work with the 32bit boundary of 2gb userspace and just the amount of textures for the planets used 2gb, and the complexity of the gameplay hitboxes weapon swings and whatever used another chunk of ram and then the third process was needed to actually move your char on the screen, if i think about it it makes me blow my top BOOM.

I think it is exceedingly rare for games to be built for 32-bit as almost every developer is using x86_64 and almost every user also. That was not true 11 years ago when SWTOR was released, but 11 years is a long time. To be honest I doubt any games these days of any recognition are 32-bit because it would be too constrained and honestly too annoying to build for. There might be some random nothing games that a hand-full of people are playing that are built for 32-bit because of an eccentric developer but that is the extreme edge case. All of that would also not prevent Steam from switching to 64-bit, it just costs money that they aren't willing to spend when it works "just fine" on Windows.

[TemplarGR]

People in general will always demand free stuff and "options" for everything. It doesn't matter if they are actually using those features. They like the warm fuzzy feeling that the option "is there" in case sometime in the next millennium they perhaps need it. It is nice knowing that you can still run the latest bleeding edge distro on pure 32bit cpus. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense. It doesn't matter if it is hard to come by working 32 bit cpu samples these days. It doesn't matter if bleeding edge software is demanding and won't run well (if at all) on such hardware anyway. All it matters is that should Jimmy from an online forum looks for 32 bit support in the list of features, it is there, so he can feel re-assured that if he somehow stumbles upon a 32 bit mobo+cpu+ram combo in a junk store, he could make it run the latest bleeding edge kernel.

Of course, do not expect these people to actually do the work. No no no, they want YOU to do the work, for features they don't need.

[ATLief]

Isn’t the 32-bit kernel still vulnerable to retbleed? It’s probably for the best that no one uses 32-bit distros anymore…

[Charlie68]

I am sure that as a Linux user, you are familiar with the concept of finding an alternative that *does* work on your platform?

Finding alternatives is always the first thing to do, unfortunately the alternatives are not always there or are up to par. When you then use a PC from that era and then switch to even the cheapest smartphone, you realize that you are using a device from another technological era. I'm not the type to rush to buy the latest model of notebook on the market, I have a couple of modest notebooks, which many here would consider obsolete by now, however after a ram upgrade and a good SSD they work fine and do their job. I just wanted to remember my last experience on a pc with a 32bit cpu, when the limits increase dramatically, it becomes natural to switch to something else.

[archkde]

Isn’t the 32-bit kernel still vulnerable to retbleed? It’s probably for the best that no one uses 32-bit distros anymore…

Not particularly relevant. Most people that run 32-bit kernels do so on old hardware without 64-bit support, not Skylake which is vulnerable to retbleed (and supports x86_64-v3).

[Weasel]

People in general will always demand free stuff and "options" for everything. It doesn't matter if they are actually using those features. They like the warm fuzzy feeling that the option "is there" in case sometime in the next millennium they perhaps need it. It is nice knowing that you can still run the latest bleeding edge distro on pure 32bit cpus. It doesn't matter if it makes no sense. It doesn't matter if it is hard to come by working 32 bit cpu samples these days. It doesn't matter if bleeding edge software is demanding and won't run well (if at all) on such hardware anyway. All it matters is that should Jimmy from an online forum looks for 32 bit support in the list of features, it is there, so he can feel re-assured that if he somehow stumbles upon a 32 bit mobo+cpu+ram combo in a junk store, he could make it run the latest bleeding edge kernel.

Of course, do not expect these people to actually do the work. No no no, they want YOU to do the work, for features they don't need.

Sounds like supporting Wayland to me.

[erniv2]

Nice to see the continued deprecation of Intel platforms in favor of RISC-based ones.

I think it is exceedingly rare for games to be built for 32-bit as almost every developer is using x86_64 and almost every user also. That was not true 11 years ago when SWTOR was released, but 11 years is a long time. To be honest I doubt any games these days of any recognition are 32-bit because it would be too constrained and honestly too annoying to build for. There might be some random nothing games that a hand-full of people are playing that are built for 32-bit because of an eccentric developer but that is the extreme edge case. All of that would also not prevent Steam from switching to 64-bit, it just costs money that they aren't willing to spend when it works "just fine" on Windows.

Not all of the Steam code is 32bit ofc. alot is 64bit, but in the end they have to provide compatibilty for old games that are still played and listed on steam, SWTOR is in my steam lib and it still is 32bit 11 years later.

That is Reality, they have to provide 32bit compat libs and a 32bit launcher to make a large chunk of steam listed titels playable no way around i bet around half of the games i subscribed are 32bit.

[mxan]

Yes, I care!

We still have one of these 32-bit netbooks and installing Leap was impossible...
Installed Tumbleweed and still, several packages are missing...

I guess you can say it's time for a change though...

Debian still supports 32-bit x86, so you can always hop over there. The BSDs likely won't drop it any time soon either.

[CommunityMember]

Isn’t the 32-bit kernel still vulnerable to retbleed? It’s probably for the best that no one uses 32-bit distros anymore…

It is the hardware that may be vulnerable (in most cases you can run a 32-bit kernel even on the most recent hardware). However, more importantly, the vulnerabilities are often not fully tested for those use cases, and mitigations may not even be written/applied on 32-bit systems, and even if they are may not be well tested to see if they do the mitigation correctly. Which is just one more thing that those who want to maintain distro support for 32-bit need to add to their QA processes.

[Joe Braga]

Devil's Advocate: That's to be expected. It makes more sense to buy current and supported hardware that has software support for a known amount of time than it is to pay someone to maintain software for an unknown amount of time on hardware that's becoming harder to find. If you're going to pay someone to develop or maintain software then you'd pay them to upgrade or rewrite whatever it is you depend on to work on current, preferably long term supported, hardware.

Also, in some ways it is kind of like Wal-Mart going, "OK. So we're going to need some volunteers to stock produce for now on. Grab some veggies on your way in and put them on a shelf before you go shopping for or we're just not going to have the Produce Department any more." It makes me wonder what they were paying to keep an entire hardware architecture supported up until now and if it isn't at least worth considering offering some low ball positions that are geared for retired or poor developers that want something to do but either don't want the responsibilities or have the financial means of maintaining a company's software stack for free or out of pocket.

Even though many professional programs' suites that we use on Windows still install the .exe program is still on program files(x86) even there is the x64 program files folder, I don't understand why Linux' community for every distro complains when the developers drop the 32-bit packages support, why others put these 32-bit libraries like a sandbox by flatpak or snap package for every distro that it won't depend on the packages that runs natively on the distro such as rpm, Deb or arch package