Canonical announces Ubuntu will no longer be shipping 32-bit libraries for apps or games starting on 19.10

[Chunchunmaru_]

2 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The way I see it, if developers didn’t make the switch to 64bit by now, they are never going to and there should be no sympathy towards the developers who have abandoned their software like that. 

Well...I can just tell you discord developers just led an insane bug unresolved for months where pressing alt would crash the application, at least in the end they solved that. Linux Is and will always be low priority except for open source projects 

 

I just think that there will be the need of some other time differently from other operating system with more market share to be at the same level. I don't know how much

 

That's why I said this is not what an OS with few market share needs, I could have accepted that for something like Windows 

[DrMacintosh]

3 minutes ago, will1432 said:

what about the consumers? Why should they be punished for the developers choice to not spend money on converting?

I’d argue that the consumer would be better off finding a new application to do the job better. 

[The King of the Undead]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

I’d argue that the consumer would be better off finding a new application to do the job better. 

what about the niche programs?

[dalekphalm]

13 minutes ago, will1432 said:

for option 1 yes but what if I play 1 legacy game and don't want to run a vm? what if your pc can not handle it (like mine) and you don't want to run on an old os just for this game? and I know just do not play the game but then you have lost all the joy you had from that game

If it's just one game, you then need to decide how you want to handle the situation:

1. Stay on 18.04, and be able to play the game, or update to a newer Ubuntu version, and do a work around (VM, etc)

2. Or just don't play the game.

 

There are ways to still play it. It's not Ubuntu's responsibility to ensure really old games that aren't under development anymore continue to work, when those games used Legacy libraries.

11 minutes ago, Chunchunmaru_ said:

I do still think that for Apple and apple developers are going to manage things better, they also announced this 1 year before

For ubuntu is just one distribution, and ok you can still use the LTS but not everyone will be using LTS especially for new hardware, where some GPU do not have support even for installs

 

Also linux distributions pretty much depends on wine for program support, which most of the time is 32 bit because windows is still using it, Apple has most of the time their own counterpart and better support at first from developers, and the company itself behind actually cares about the user base

You're kidding yourself if you don't think the WINE devs will prepare for this and fix it - probably by just including the libraries themselves. It might not be ready for launch, but it'll happen.

5 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

The way I see it, if developers didn’t make the switch to 64bit by now, they are never going to and there should be no sympathy towards the developers who have abandoned their software like that. 

Agreed.

3 minutes ago, will1432 said:

what about the consumers? Why should they be punished for the developers choice to not spend money on converting?

Tough luck. Ubuntu can't hold themselves back because of shitty devs. And if consumers get caught in the crossfire, those consumers should get mad at the devs who won't update their software.

 

And if the program has been abandoned, you should either find an alternative, or try and convince devs to make one.

[dalekphalm]

Just now, will1432 said:

what about the niche programs?

If it's a niche program, then you need to adapt yourself (as the niche user) to the situation. Run 18.04 on the system that needs to use the niche program. Problem solved.

 

It's not like an old version of Ubuntu will just stop working. Even after 18.04 loses official support (which lasts 5 years, btw), it'll still run.

[The King of the Undead]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

If it's just one game, you then need to decide how you want to handle the situation:

1. Stay on 18.04, and be able to play the game, or update to a newer Ubuntu version, and do a work around (VM, etc)

2. Or just don't play the game.

 

There are ways to still play it. It's not Ubuntu's responsibility to ensure really old games that aren't under development anymore continue to work, when those games used Legacy libraries.

You're kidding yourself if you don't think the WINE devs will prepare for this and fix it - probably by just including the libraries themselves. It might not be ready for launch, but it'll happen.

Agreed.

Tough luck. Ubuntu can't hold themselves back because of shitty devs. And if consumers get caught in the crossfire, those consumers should get mad at the devs who won't update their software.

 

And if the program has been abandoned, you should either find an alternative, or try and convince devs to make one.

true. And we are talking about linux so somebody will just make new ones anyway.

[Chunchunmaru_]

1 minute ago, DrMacintosh said:

I’d argue that the consumer would be better off finding a new application to do the job better. 

The fact is for Linux is a bit different matter imo, to get adopted it has to be easier to use, not to install thirrd party repos, or compatibility layer or other lxd containers to get full application support (which is at the current time with both 32 and 64bit sufficient) which ok should be the standard in 2019 but considering for gaming also depends on 32bit windows support, this will just damage end users who don't want hassle with their OS. 

 

That's my main concern at all and damages Linux in desktops tor everyone

[The King of the Undead]

3 minutes ago, Chunchunmaru_ said:

The fact is for Linux is a bit different matter imo, to get adopted it has to be easier to use, not to install thirrd party repos, or compatibility layer or other lxd containers to get full application support (which is at the current time with both 32 and 64bit sufficient) which ok should be the standard in 2019 but considering for gaming also depends on 32bit windows support, this will just damage end users who don't want hassle with their OS. 

 

That's my main concern at all and damages Linux in desktops tor everyone

if you use linux you will be able to use ppa or you will pretty much just use bundled software and somebody on linux will probably make a ppa

[Chunchunmaru_]

10 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

 

You're kidding yourself if you don't thinkthe WINE devs will prepare for this and fix it - probably by just including the libraries themselves. It might not be ready for launch, but it'll happen.

Lol I would put some memes here, I don't know if you ever compiled wine but already it's been a nightmare from years... I could give details on that

 

if it will be, that would require some time and I'm almost 70% sure as it always happened to get support late on it for projects like those, wine has other things to care rather than compatibility for distributions, like they also offer some binaries but most of the time are outdated. 

 

Even if there is the LTS I'm pretty sure this is not going to be harmful, as I said before not everyone wants and can use it, especially for newer hardware support.

 

Unless they release a new LTS with backported drivers, which I hope will happen.

 

I think the main concern of a distro developer is to simplify things, not getting things harder, you want people to use you, not to hassle with alternatives even for good reasons like making developers stop using 32 bit.  (which for Linux, won't anyway soon)

[dalekphalm]

2 minutes ago, Chunchunmaru_ said:

Lol I would put some memes here, I don't know if you ever compiled wine but already it's been a nightmare from years... I could give details on that

 

if it will be, that would require some time and I'm almost 70% sure as it always happened to get support late on it for projects like those, wine has other things to care rather than compatibility for distributions, like they also offer some binaries but most of the time are outdated. 

 

Even if there is the LTS I'm pretty sure this is not going to be harmful, as I said before not everyone wants and can use it, especially for newer hardware support.

 

Unless they release a new LTS with backported drivers, which I hope will happen.

 

I think the main concern of a distro developer is to simplify things, not getting things harder, you want people to use you, not to hassle with alternatives even for good reasons like making developers stop using 32 bit.  (which for Linux, won't anyway soon)

Getting rid of a legacy and unnecessary library is simplifying things for the future.

 

There will be growing pains during the transition. That's mostly due to the devs themselves using the legacy library. This is not the end of the world, and probably won't affect most of the "noob" users anyway.

[Chunchunmaru_]

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

 probably won't affect most of the "noob" users anyway.

I just thought some ideas by myself for addressing this

 

I had in mind to create an automated build system like it already happens for some PPA autobuilds for the basic 32bit libraries synchronized with their Ubuntu counterpart, but will still need help for eventual build errors to address

 

but I don't probably have the resources to do that alone, so I hope I give some ideas to someone, to get the repo easily installed and signed, would require just a Deb package with the key on it, the sources.conf in /etc/apt/sources.d/, and for the postinstall just the command to enable i386 dpkg.

 

That would be just one click it be installed and will already show i386 libraries after the apt update.

[dalekphalm]

3 minutes ago, Chunchunmaru_ said:

I just thought some ideas by myself for addressing this

 

I had in mind to create an automated build system like it already happens for some PPA autobuilds for the basic 32bit libraries synchronized with their Ubuntu counterpart, but will still need help for eventual build errors to address

 

but I don't probably have the resources to do that alone, so I hope I give some ideas to someone, to get the repo easily installed and signed, would require just a Deb package with the key on it, the sources.conf in /etc/apt/sources.d/, and for the postinstall just the command to enable i386 dpkg.

 

That would be just one click it be installed and will already show i386 libraries after the apt update.

As we can see, there are many ways to mitigate the impact of this.

 

But I 100% support Canonical's decision to do with (Though I do think they should have given more time before the switch - 1 year, for example). But I do not think Canonical should provide anything at all, including optional packages or downloads, to help people continue to use the 32-bit libraries. I 100% agree with their decision to cut it off completely, and not bandaid the situation (which would just enable lazy devs to keep using the legacy libraries, and make the entire situation worse in the long run).

 

In a year or 2, this won't be an issue at all for the majority of users.

[Chunchunmaru_]

5 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

As we can see, there are many ways to mitigate the impact of this.

 

But I 100% support Canonical's decision to do with (Though I do think they should have given more time before the switch - 1 year, for example). But I do not think Canonical should provide anything at all, including optional packages or downloads, to help people continue to use the 32-bit libraries. I 100% agree with their decision to cut it off completely, and not bandaid the situation (which would just enable lazy devs to keep using the legacy libraries, and make the entire situation worse in the long run).

 

In a year or 2, this won't be an issue at all for the majority of users.

To be honest the only thing I see about canonical leading this decision is making more money, they are competing against clouds services after all and it's not like desktops are their concern at all...

 

supporting i386 also means offering builds and storage

 

Ubuntu phone was a failure, as unity and Mir (which was actually a good project anyway)

[Jito463]

56 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

This is just like macOS Catalina. 

The difference being that one expects it of Apple, since their OS's are restricted and locked down.  It's not expected on something that's widely considered as open as Linux is.

[dalekphalm]

9 minutes ago, Chunchunmaru_ said:

To be honest the only thing I see about canonical leading this decision is making more money, they are competing against clouds services after all and it's not like desktops are their concern at all...

 

supporting i386 also means offering builds and storage

 

Ubuntu phone was a failure, as unity and Mir (which was actually a good project anyway)

I'm unsure as to how you can claim that they made this decision to "make more money"? I don't see any logic in that assumption.

 

I can see it as "minimize unnecessary development time", which I guess you could say would "make them money" (but would more accurately save them money, not make them more money).

 

Either way, they made the right choice - though perhaps could have given more time before implementing it.

[Chunchunmaru_]

8 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

I can see it as "minimize unnecessary development time", which I guess you could say would "make them money" (but would more accurately save them money, not make them more money).

This, but so far they are the only one making that decision

 

A lot of distros already deprecated 32bit only installations which was the right thing to do only imo, and are all community projects, Ubuntu only supports 64bit and arm too, some distributions with less revenue like Debian develop and maintain 5 as much architectures 

 

So really I this point idk, whatever. I just hoped them to wait time at least instead of sudden decisions, as you said they could have announced this one year before

 

To be clear, that was already addressed 3 years ago, but they didn't come up to a conclusion

[LAwLz]

15 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Either way, they made the right choice - though perhaps could have given more time before implementing it.

On one hand this seems sudden. 

On the other hand, this change only affects those who are running the most up to date and quite fast phased release. 

I'd say thst there is an argument to be made that if people don't want large changes to happen somewhat frequently then there is always the long term support version. This change won't happen in that, and it will be supported until 2023. So you could argue that they have given a 4 year notice. 

 

But personally I think they could have given info about it sooner. 

[leadeater]

40 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

On one hand this seems sudden. 

On the other hand, this change only affects those who are running the most up to date and quite fast phased release. 

I'd say thst there is an argument to be made that if people don't want large changes to happen somewhat frequently then there is always the long term support version. This change won't happen in that, and it will be supported until 2023. So you could argue that they have given a 4 year notice. 

 

But personally I think they could have given info about it sooner. 

We only deploy LTS or equivalent versions of Linux distributions, this is plenty of notice of change and similar to what any other company gives. You also still have the option of supporting and maintaining your system yourself for longer as needed, source repos aren't going anywhere so build what you need yourself.

[Drak3]

17 hours ago, Jito463 said:

The difference being that one expects it of Apple, since their OS's are restricted and locked down.  It's not expected on something that's widely considered as open as Linux is.

The difference being Apple targets very specific configurations of hardware and has a strong presence in the software ecosystem, being more interested in having fewer but higher quality programs.

 

Whereas Linux (and Windows) targets as much hardware as possible and aim to run as much software as possible. Canonical is going against that, hurting the biggest advantage they have against BSD.

[Chunchunmaru_]

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

We only deploy LTS or equivalent versions of Linux distributions, this is plenty of notice of change and similar to what any other company gives. You also still have the option of supporting and maintaining your system yourself for longer as needed, source repos aren't going anywhere so build what you need yourself.

I mean it's pretty reasonable and makes sense for deployers...

 

Oh anyway Wine developers already addressed as they don't have the intention to manually ship 32bit libraries in their builds for Ubuntu 19.10, looks like I was at least a bit right to criticize this sudden decision, I expected not everyone would agree at this  (read the mailing list)

https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2019-June/147869.html

 

Also as I said, they agree mixing 32 and 64 bit libraries in different versions us not going to work

 

 

And DXVK developers are just also mad as well

[Chunchunmaru_]

Uhmmm.... Looks like Valve is not going to officially support Steam for Ubuntu starting from the 19.10 version.... SteamOS time again?

 

Who said I was being to harsh about this and things would go solved really easily?

This means all people can rely of is the community, and could mean we could have wait a lot of time and not have support at all 

 

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Valve-Dropping-Official-Ubuntu

 

[dalekphalm]

2 hours ago, Chunchunmaru_ said:

Uhmmm.... Looks like Valve is not going to officially support Steam for Ubuntu starting from the 19.10 version.... SteamOS time again?

 

Who said I was being to harsh about this and things would go solved really easily?

This means all people can rely of is the community, and could mean we could have wait a lot of time and not have support at all 

 

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Valve-Dropping-Official-Ubuntu

 

Bad move if Canonical bows to dev pressure. Valve could easily solve this on their own by providing the 32-bit Libraries within the installation of Steam itself. By forcing Canonical to reverse course, they're simply contributing to the prolonging of this problem.

[Harry L B]

Does this mean that it will not work at all?

[Skiiwee29]

5 minutes ago, Harry L B said:

Does this mean that it will not work at all?

all the info you need will be in here: 

if not, then ask there. 

 

 

[Guest]

Hm, looks like they won't be dropping support after all: