Fedora proposal to drop 32-bit support has been withdrawn
Fedora proposal to drop 32-bit support has been withdrawn
There was a whole lot of discussion recently for the Fedora Linux proposal to drop 32-bit support, with the current plan being dropped.
32bit does need to go but we're at a time where a lot of people are switching their main PCs or gaming PCs over to Fedora to get ahead of Windows 10 EoS. The timing in this change couldn't be worse (even if it's two versions ahead.)
It's bad PR to break Steam and gaming at this time. Valve needs to sort this out on their end but the Fedora Project needs to check in with their users to see what they're using on Fedora.
Also loved the gaslighting at the end. Very Linux dev.
What gaslight?
Containerizing the 2038 problem won't fix 32 bit issues that need recompilations.
Have you set your devices to 2038 and reported the issues your distro needs fixed?
I'm using multilib for gaming compatibility, I'm not saying we need full _time32 support.
If I pull 32bit libs for specific applications, why would that affect the kernel or the user spaces apps that are all 64 bit and using 64 bit function calls??
2038 will break games that make specific calls to 32bit time functions, sure. Thats gonna suck in 12 years from now. But what if instead of breaking compatibility for gaming now, we work towards a solution in the next 12 years?
Yet Apple somehow got away with removing 32-bit apps and changing architectures multiple times.
And they broke A LOT of software along the way.
Software people rewrote, wrote, and forwarded along the way.
I don't think Apple is concerned with making every app and game work on their systems to the same degree as a Linux distro. They have a niche they seem satisfied with and that niche isn't really Steam games.
With that being said, Valve made a 64 bit client for Mac so whichever major distro is first will probably push Valve to finally make a 64 bit version for Linux.
Is dropping support for 32bit hardware more important than being able to run on everything?
Because it has always seemed like one of Linux’s core strengths is that no matter what your hardware is, you can run Linux on it.
Being able to run on everything is nice, but what you're actually asking for here is for a highly skilled (and rare) distro maintainer to dedicate substantial amounts of time to maintaining and testing thousands of packages on 32 bit systems in case someone wants to use it. It's not just like users get to click a button and voila, they can run more games than before.
If you really need to use 32 bit software, eventually you'll just have to manage it yourself because no one else is able to do it for you. That capability will almost never go away.
There are and will always be distros optimized for running on everything. Fedora is a "move fast" distro, it's hard to move fast with a lot of baggage.
Run fast is fine, until it's run away fast...
Is dropping support for 32bit hardware more important than being able to run on everything?
Yes evidently, because they dropped that hardware support in 2019. Specifically they dropped 32-bit x86 kernels in Fedora 31
To be a little more precise, Linux is still available for 32-bit x86, just not from the Fedora distro. The Linux project is just now dropping support for 486 CPUs, because the maintenance burden for a virtually unused system type is too high for the mainline. That still leaves 32-bit Pentiums and newer though.
I think the last time I had a 32 bit CPU was around 2005 but I could be remembering that incorrectly. Supporting 20 year old hardware isn't always easy.
Fedora is usually the first to pioneer something
Don't break userspace. 32-bit support should never be removed.
Don’t break userspace.
That's a kernel saying. A bit unfitting to repeat it for the distro that builds said userspace.
By that logic we should never remove anything legacy ever. It don't work like that.
Userspace is allowed to break themselves
So we’re just gonna keep chugging along until 2038? Please.
No. Valve (the biggest offender) will have to make native 64-bit Steam before then, as will the remaining holdouts, so Linux distros will be able to remove 32-bit packages in a timely manner.
Removing then now will break too much to be worth doing.
Well, that makes Fedora a distro I can marginally trust for now.
at least for another 6 months...