Fedora To Stop Providing i686 Kernels, Might Also Drop 32-Bit Modular/Everything Repos

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora To Stop Providing i686 Kernels, Might Also Drop 32-Bit Modular/Everything Repos

The proposed change to no longer build i686 Linux kernel packages beginning with the Fedora 31 release later this year has been approved. Additionally, they might also begin removing some 32-bit repositories...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Fedora-i686-Drop-Kernel-Plus

[tildearrow]

This comment has been nuked.

[skeevy420]

This is very, very worrying for Steam and other 32-bit applications.

(unless I got it wrong)

It's just dropping i686 support, not multilib.

With the dropping of the i686 kernel package it's no longer possible to directly install Fedora 31 or later on i686 hardware, however, it is still possibly to upgrade older releases as long as we continue to provide a repository. This will leave those users with an old possibly vulnerable kernel installed.

The only other use/need for the repostories is to allow maintainers to debug and test fixes for multilib shipped packages, but the koji buildroot repo can be used for this use case.

EDIT: Point out Fedora wiki typo

[carewolf]

This is very, very worrying for Steam and other 32-bit applications.

(unless I got it wrong)

No, the everything repo isn't everything

[kparal]

Michael, please add to the article a quite important note that this change doesn't affect multilib, i.e. it doesn't prevent Steam/Wine/etc to be used in Fedora 31 and above. Thanks.

[dungeon]

This is very, very worrying for Steam and other 32-bit applications.

This is about total removal of any 32bit support for 32bit only x86 hardware

(unless I got it wrong)

You are not wrong about future, but currently you are not right

These removals goes step by step for years (as nothing is supported forever, just imagine how eldest hardware loses support continually), so at some point in future that is planed to be done only that no one knows when exactly

Maybe at the time when it hurts less, i guess

[r08z]

I think the bigger question is when is steam going to start shipping 64bit clients and why the hell are 99% of games still being made in 32bit?

[Guest]

At least they aren't dumb enough to drop multilib.

[nanonyme]

At least they aren't dumb enough to drop multilib.

It might not actually be that bad at this point. It's pretty easy to enable Flathub and install Steam as Flatpak on Fedora. Now what would really be a bold move is removing 32bit support from 64bit kernels to reduce attack surface.

[Guest]

It might not actually be that bad at this point. It's pretty easy to enable Flathub and install Steam as Flatpak on Fedora. Now what would really be a bold move is removing 32bit support from 64bit kernels to reduce attack surface.

Multilib isn't just about Steam games. There are plenty of other things that need it, including proprietary drivers that never got 64-bit releases.