Wine Developers Appear Quite Apprehensive About Ubuntu's Plans To Drop 32-Bit Support

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Wine Developers Appear Quite Apprehensive About Ubuntu's Plans To Drop 32-Bit Support

It's looking like the plans announced by Canonical this week to drop their 32-bit packages/libraries beginning with Ubuntu 19.10 will be causing problems for the Wine camp at least in the near-term until an adequate solution is sorted out for providing their 32-bit Wine builds to Ubuntu users...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Wine-Unsure-Ubuntu-32-Bit

[schmidtbag]

I don't see why Ubuntu couldn't just release 32-bit versions of all of Wine's dependencies while dropping the rest of the architecture. Maybe have them packaged under the amd64 repo, but just prefixed with "x86" or whatever. Seems like a pretty easy solution to me...

[loganj]

time for other distros to shine

[birdie]

I actually hope Ubuntu developers will go ahead with this asinine plan and then when they lose a substantial chunk of their userbase, maybe then they will reconsider it. By that time it might be too late but it's not like they are listening.

[birdie]

I don't see why Ubuntu couldn't just release 32-bit versions of all of Wine's dependencies while dropping the rest of the architecture. Maybe have them packaged under the amd64 repo, but just prefixed with "x86" or whatever. Seems like a pretty easy solution to me...

If you think Wine is the only 32bit project which requires 32bit libraries, then I may have to burst your bubble. It's far from the only one.

[schmidtbag]

If you think Wine is the only 32bit project which requires 32bit libraries, then I may have to burst your bubble. It's far from the only one.

Name 1 other open-source project in Ubuntu's repos that depends on 32-bit libraries. I'm well aware there are plenty of closed-source ones, but, many of them provide their own libraries. Case in point: Steam.
Worst-case scenario, I'm sure some closed-source 32-bit programs could just use Flatpak.

[Scellow]

the people who refuse to drop 32bit support and move forward deserve to be left in the past with other dead projects

wine is a mistake, it makes people rely on buggy solutions rather than unite and offer sane environment for apps/games to prosper

macOS dropped 32bit LONG time ago, and it is doing MUCH MUCH MUCH better than what you are trying to achieve with linux OS's aka stay in the 80's with your anti UX/UI preferences

[Guest]

I thought that this wouldn't be an issue considering that multilib exists. I understand that Canonical might not want to provide a 32-bit version of their distro, but with so much proprietary software around, not providing multilib is just shooting yourself in the foot. I'm assuming someone is prematurely panicking here.

[eszlari]

With the freedesktop runtime 19.08, flatpak will provide a way to build and deploy combined 32/64-bit app bundles:

https://gitlab.com/freedesktop-sdk/freedesktop-sdk/issues/348

[F.Ultra]

I thought that this wouldn't be an issue considering that multilib exists. I understand that Canonical might not want to provide a 32-bit version of their distro, but with so much proprietary software around, not providing multilib is just shooting yourself in the foot. I'm assuming someone is prematurely panicking here.

The problem is that you need a 32-bit build environment in order to build those 32-bit multilibs and then the users also need to have 32-bit versions of all the dependencies to those libraries.

You are probably correct though that people are prematurely panicking here but that is more on the side of that they think that this decision is set in stone. Right now we only have a Ubuntu dev that have raised the question whether or not they should drop i386 support, that dev probably does not use Wine or Steam so what is happening now is those projects telling Ubuntu that they still need i386 support.

Panick-mode can be enabled if Ubuntu heeds on anyway with this decision despite the backlash from Wine and/or Steam (AFAIK we have not heard from Valve regarding this yet).