Ubuntu planning to completely drop the i386 (32-bit x86) arch from the official repos in 19.10, threatening Linux gaming[Update: Decision walked back]

Pokemaniac · Jun 19, 2019

Update: partially reversing course

Pokemaniac said:
https://ubuntu.com/blog/statement-on-32-bit-i386-packages-for-ubuntu-19-10-and-20-04-lts

Looks like the reaction was strong enough that they're now going to take the somewhat saner approach of paring back the 32-bit repos to just what's needed to maintain backwards compatibility, at least through the upcoming 20.04 LTS cycle. They still seem to be pushing their somewhat misguided container approach as a longer term solution, but this will at least kick the can down the road a bit longer.

Original Post:

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/i386...dropped-starting-with-eoan-ubuntu-19-10/11263

This doesn't stop 32-bit software from running completely, but it does mean that none of the 32-bit system libraries (including drivers) will be available in the official repos, making running 32-bit software somewhat challenging, to say the least. While most Linux software won't be affected, as 64-bit support is generally the norm, games and Wine (which is used by Valve's Proton) are some very notable exceptions. Plenty of games on Linux are still shipped as 32-bit to this day (along with Steam itself), and Wine needs 32-bit libraries for running 32-bit Windows software.

Right now the only proposed solutions for using 32-bit software are developers packaging their apps as Snaps or users running them in lxd containers, but neither of those are particularly great solutions, especially for non-technical users. It does look like Valve is at least looking into doing something to get their stuff working, but Steam isn't everything, and they really shouldn't have to do this.

It's still a little bit early to go into full "sky is falling" mode, as there's a chance that some more elegant solution will emerge between now and October (or maybe if we're really lucky Canonical will realize that fully killing multiarch is a bad idea and change their mind), but things aren't exactly looking very good right now.

Elfforkusu · Jun 19, 2019

I honestly don't think this is much to worry about on its own -- will just make Steam's role (and wine's role) more important. They'll have to ship more libraries, but so what? I don't want to trivialize the extra development effort that Steam and the wine project will have to undertake -- which sucks -- but for end users I don't think it'll be a disaster. It's definitely a dick move on Ubuntu's fault, but they love doing that crap.

It *does* suck for some legacy software though (potentially including games that run outside of Steam), which means I might be looking for a new distro for home use!

HanzSnubSnub · Jun 19, 2019

Losing support is always a bad thing, but the writing has been on the wall for 32-bit architectures for a long time. We all knew this day was coming.

firehawk12 · Jun 19, 2019

I just feel old witnessing 32-bit truly become obsolete.

Theswweet · Jun 19, 2019

I remember when I was still using Linux, wine-staging had its own repo - that solves wine32, but I guess it doesn't too much for the other libraries needed.

Pokemaniac · Jun 19, 2019

HanzSnubSnub said:
Losing support is always a bad thing, but the writing has been on the wall for 32-bit architectures for a long time. We all knew this day was coming.

That doesn't really make dropping it now before good compatibility tools are available (since the hardware BC isn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future) justifiable, though. Especially since Debian, upon which Ubuntu is heavily based, shows no signs of dropping 32-bit packages anytime soon.

Elfforkusu · Jun 19, 2019

HanzSnubSnub said:
Losing support is always a bad thing, but the writing has been on the wall for 32-bit architectures for a long time. We all knew this day was coming.

Yes and no, it seems like they're not just dropping support for 32-bit architectures, but also 32-bit software. Which tbh is pretty brutal. Though popular stuff like Steam will be able to work around it by packaging the necessary libraries (e.g. all of them) and letting all games (wine) ride the coattails, everything else that runs on 32 bit is going to require a lot of effort that may not happen. Presumably most apps that run on 32-bit would've already been upgraded to 64-bit if they were actively maintained, after all...

Considering Debian isn't dropping support, this is more of the typical Canonical bullshit, prioritizing their own interests over their users'

Deleted member 12790 · Jun 19, 2019

This is a problem Steam as a dependency already solves.

GoldenEye 007 · Jun 19, 2019

When did 64 bit stuff start coming out? Around the Athlon 64 days in the mid 2000 range? I feel like this has been a long time coming.

I would have though that within the last 15ish years, contingencies would have been thought through.

Mobu · Jun 19, 2019

Just switch to gentoo

Pokemaniac · Jun 19, 2019

Krejlooc said:
This is a problem Steam as a dependency already solves.

To a degree, but they'd have to expand what they provide pretty substantially to fully address this. They'd most likely even need to somehow acquire 32-bit versions of the system's GPU drivers.

Also there are other storefronts that sell Linux games. It's not really a complete solution to the backwards compatibility problem.

GoldenEye 007 said:
When did 64 bit stuff start coming out? Around the Athlon 64 days in the mid 2000 range? I feel like this has been a long time coming.

I would have though that within the last 15ish years, contingencies would have been though if.

Everything's broadly been fine because running 32-bit software alongside 64-bit software on x86 is a pretty well solved problem in the OS space. This is only becoming an issue because Canonical has decided they don't want to provide the necessary system libraries anymore (despite 32-bit support still being largely present upstream). Cutting off support now is a very boneheaded, Apple-esque move.

Hilarious_Bearious · Jun 19, 2019

To be fair, that leaves 4 years for current products to be migrated. It sucks for legacy software, but surely if there's enough demand somebody else will take over the i386 libraries and maintain a repo?

Deleted member 12790 · Jun 19, 2019

Pokemaniac said:
To a degree, but they'd have to expand what they provide pretty substantially to fully address this. They'd most likely even need to somehow acquire 32-bit versions of the system's GPU drivers.

Also there are other storefronts that sell Linux games. It's not really a complete solution to the backwards compatibility problem.

You misunderstand what people mean when they say steam as a dependency. They dont mean using steam or even running through steam. Steam as a dependency means mearly having steam installed in ubuntu will ensure the right packages are installed to run 32 bit applications, outside of steam entirely. Steam as a dependency refers to steam itself as a library package to build against.

Steam is already this for many shared object libraries for Linux gaming.

Hu3 · Jun 19, 2019

Good, this should force repositories to improve and move on, and code go beyond it should be, steam repositories should be updated in Xcode as often as they are updated on windows.

Pokemaniac · Jun 19, 2019

Krejlooc said:
You misunderstand what people mean when they say steam as a dependency. They dont mean using steam or even running through steam. Steam as a dependency means mearly having steam installed in ubuntu will ensure the right packages are installed to run 32 bit applications, outside of steam entirely. Steam as a dependency refers to steam itself as a library package to build against.

Steam is already this for many shared object libraries for Linux gaming.

A ton of the packages it needs to install are being completely removed from Ubuntu, though. Valve is going to need to start actually building and providing 100% of the multiarch libraries for themselves once this happens.

It's definitely something that they could do if they so desired, but it's pretty different in scope from just making sure the necessary distro packages are installed.

low-G · Jun 20, 2019

HanzSnubSnub said:
Losing support is always a bad thing, but the writing has been on the wall for 32-bit architectures for a long time. We all knew this day was coming.

No that's ridiculous. You don't drop legacy support on a platform like x86 after this short of a time. You wait until hardware manufacturers are giving up the ghost and going 64 bit only (ie Intel doing Itanium 2), then you drop it. This is Ubuntu giving up entirely.

Also this is more disastrous than some of you are recognizing.

signal · Jun 20, 2019

#useSolus

Can't they just drop i386 releases but keep multilib repos like Arch does

Symphony · Jun 20, 2019

Question from the clueless, does this mean that if I wanted to play (non-Steam) 32bit Windows games through Linux that I wouldn't be able to? Because if so that's absolutely terrible, I've been on the verge of giving Linux a proper try since W10 is annoying me so much, but 32 bit support is non-negotiable.

Alvis · Jun 20, 2019

I've always thought that when Valve ported Steam to Linux they should have made it 64 bit only from the start and only support 64 bit games. The client launched late enough that it wouldn't have been a problem for anyone tech savvy enough to use Linux. Like, even back then no one was gaming on a 32 bit gaming os lmao.

Starting on 32 bit and then trying to move to 64 bit is much more messy than just being like "okay, only 64 bit stuff is supported" from the start

Sure, some games that already had their Linux port made before Steam for Linux shipped would never made it to steam but eeeeh

But what I'm saying probably is dumb since Proton would require multilibs anyway for 32 bit Windows games

Deleted member 1849 · Jun 20, 2019

The Steam runtime already minimizes the damage this will do to games on Steam, and I'm sure Valve will work on fixing other issues that come up, but this could be disastrous for older Linux games on GOG and elsewhere. For Steam, the worst thing I've got to say is that fixing this takes away resources that really should be used elsewhere.

Not to mention all the non-gaming software this is going to impact.

Deleted member 8166 · Jun 20, 2019

good decision. sometimes it is just time to cut of old bloat and force people into the now.
I understand that it will cause some problems for me too, but eh.

Elfforkusu · Jun 20, 2019

Symphony said:
Question from the clueless, does this mean that if I wanted to play (non-Steam) 32bit Windows games through Linux that I wouldn't be able to? Because if so that's absolutely terrible, I've been on the verge of giving Linux a proper try since W10 is annoying me so much, but 32 bit support is non-negotiable.

You will possibly be able to jury rig it with Photon + the libraries Steam provides. e.g. use Steam's linux infrastructure for things outside of Steam.

It will not be a turnkey solution though, there will probably be some pain involved in getting it all set up right.

Windrunner · Jun 20, 2019

Mac OS is dropping supporting for 32bit entirely in the latest update. It's time to move on.

Deleted member 1849 · Jun 20, 2019

Symphony said:
Question from the clueless, does this mean that if I wanted to play (non-Steam) 32bit Windows games through Linux that I wouldn't be able to? Because if so that's absolutely terrible, I've been on the verge of giving Linux a proper try since W10 is annoying me so much, but 32 bit support is non-negotiable.

Just add them as a non-Steam game through the Steam client.

Proton and the steam runtime will handle the rest. Valve are already aware of the situation and won't be letting things break on them. You probably won't notice a difference.

If the game has an installer, running that could be a bit of a pain, depending on what the non-Steam game is. GOG installers are easy to deal with.

edit:

Also, please don't make the mistake of thinking Ubuntu = Linux. One good thing about Linux is that it is pretty resistant to any single entity fucking things up. If Canonical were to ever completely break Ubuntu, Linux would be fine. People would just ditch Ubuntu and use something else, like Manjaro or Solus.

low-G · Jun 20, 2019

Windrunner said:
Mac OS is dropping supporting for 32bit entirely in the latest update. It's time to move on.

Time to move on from Ubuntu and Mac OS...

For Apple users, what benefit is this? Save a few megabytes disk space? Silly.

Oh right Apple will be moving on to using their mobile chips in MacOS and not x86.. if you're going to lose compatibility anyways I guess that's fair. But I wouldn't want to use MacOS still....

Alvis · Jun 20, 2019

Windrunner said:
Mac OS is dropping supporting for 32bit entirely in the latest update. It's time to move on.

Why is it "time to move on"? I'd riot if tomorrow I was suddenly unable to play 32 bit games on Windows. You can't snatch Metal Gear Rising away from me.

Why is it that every time Apple decides to be the first in removing useful functionality, it's "time to move on"? This is giving me headphone jack vives

Jonnax · Jun 20, 2019

- Users who need support for i386 integrated natively into their OS can use
Ubuntu 18.04 with security support until April 2023.
- 18.04 can be run in a chroot or container on top of later Ubuntu releases
until 2023 with security support from Canonical, or beyond that without.
- 32-bit software distributed as snaps built with an 18.04-derived library
runtime can reasonably[1] be expected to work on later releases of Ubuntu
for the foreseeable future
- Once we're past the point where security support is available for the
libraries anyway, maybe there's no advantage anymore to having your 32-bit
compat libraries managed via the packaging system either; so maybe you
just make /lib/i386-linux-gnu a straight unpacked tarball of the libs you
need, and no longer have to worry about the version-lockstep constraints
of multiarch.

So while the use cases you mention should be taken into consideration, I
don't believe they support the conclusion that we should continue to release
Ubuntu on i386 in future releases.

> The real issue is the costs of maintainership.

Indeed, and this is a cost largely paid by Canonical (both in terms of
infrastructure, and in terms of engineering work to keep the base system
working). It's not very compelling to say that Canonical should continue
bearing these costs out of pocket on the grounds that some other companies
are unwilling to update their software to an ISA from this millennium :)

Here's some reasoning from the mailing list

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2018-May/040348.html

In my opinion, you'd would be stupid to install a 32bit version of Linux on a 64bit capable machine.

18.04 has support for around 5 more years.

32bit libraries can be bundled with an application.

There'll always be a way to run games, and steam's installer comes with the 32 bit stuff needed.

If a snap is required, the steam installer can automatically set that up on its install script.

Elfforkusu said:
Yes and no, it seems like they're not just dropping support for 32-bit architectures, but also 32-bit software. Which tbh is pretty brutal. Though popular stuff like Steam will be able to work around it by packaging the necessary libraries (e.g. all of them) and letting all games (wine) ride the coattails, everything else that runs on 32 bit is going to require a lot of effort that may not happen. Presumably most apps that run on 32-bit would've already been upgraded to 64-bit if they were actively maintained, after all...

Considering Debian isn't dropping support, this is more of the typical Canonical bullshit, prioritizing their own interests over their users'

Yawn. How much revenue does supporting 32bit get Canonical?
They've got to validate, compile and host these packages.
Not dropping support isn't going to pay anyone's salary.

low-G said:
Time to move on from Ubuntu and Mac OS...

For Apple users, what benefit is this? Save a few megabytes disk space? Silly.

Oh right Apple will be moving on to using their mobile chips in MacOS and not x86.. if you're going to lose compatibility anyways I guess that's fair. But I wouldn't want to use MacOS still....

Who's going to look for security issues for 32bit libraries? The entire world has shifted to development on 64bit.

Maybe it's more important to run an old application than getting your bank details hacked.

On Linux the meltdown (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meltdown_(security_vulnerability) ) patch is only for the 64bit kernel.

Windrunner · Jun 20, 2019

Xharos said:
Why is it "time to move on"? I'd riot if tomorrow I was suddenly unable to play 32 bit games on Windows. You can't snatch Metal Gear Rising away from me.

Why is it that every time Apple decides to be the first in removing useful functionality, it's "time to move on"? This is giving me headphone jack vives

We've had about 15 years of 64bit processors. Enough with this legacy cruft.

low-G · Jun 20, 2019

Windrunner said:
We've had about 15 years of 64bit processors. Enough with this legacy cruft.

"All cities should be bulldozed to the ground every 15 years and rebuilt with the newest tech."

Windrunner · Jun 20, 2019

low-G said:
"All cities should be bulldozed to the ground every 15 years and rebuilt with the newest tech."

Sacrificing everything on the altar of legacy compatibility is why Windows is such a mess.

signal · Jun 20, 2019

Why is every Linux game sold on GOG 32bit?

Elfforkusu · Jun 20, 2019

Jonnax said:
Yawn. How much revenue does supporting 32bit get Canonical?
They've got to validate, compile and host these packages.
Not dropping support isn't going to pay anyone's salary.

Depends how much marketshare they lose from people running away from their platform!

Discontinuing support for 32-bit architectures is reasonable, discontinuing support for 32-bit apps is decidedly not. The arguments about "you can use 18.04 LTS until EOL!" ring super hollow, legacy apps that are still 32-bit (e.g. games) aren't going to be updated, and removing support for them at the OS level means everyone will have to do their own shitty half-assed multiarch solution to keep their old stuff working.

Or, more likely, switch to a different distro that actually meets their needs. That's what I'll likely be doing, which is a shame!

Hopefully Linux Mint keeps multiarch!

Windrunner said:
We've had about 15 years of 64bit processors. Enough with this legacy cruft.

32-bit apps will outlive you and me.

Jonnax · Jun 20, 2019

low-G said:
"All cities should be bulldozed to the ground every 15 years and rebuilt with the newest tech."

Who is going to pay for the maintenance of the old code?

Elfforkusu said:
Depends how much marketshare they lose from people running away from their platform!

Discontinuing support for 32-bit architectures is reasonable, discontinuing support for 32-bit apps is decidedly not. The arguments about "you can use 18.04 LTS until EOL!" ring super hollow, legacy apps that are still 32-bit (e.g. games) aren't going to be updated, and removing support for them at the OS level means everyone will have to do a shitty half-assed multiarch solution to keep their old stuff working.

Or, more likely, switch to a different distro that actually meets their needs. That's what I'll likely be doing, which is a shame!

Hopefully Linux Mint keeps multiarch!

Who is going to run away from the platform?
Linux desktop users pay nothing to Canonical, so it's not much of a loss to them.

Fedora is running into the issue of nobody caring about 32bit bugs.

https://lwn.net/Articles/728207/

4 years of support is a long time before EOL.
If people need to play older games, containerising the application is a solution that is possible today.

M

Elfforkusu · Jun 20, 2019

Jonnax said:
Who is going to pay for the maintenance of the old code?

What maintenance are you talking about? The maintenance to repackage libraries for thousands of legacy apps that are abandonware, but still useful to some small subset of people? e.g. accessibility software...

Again, games are the smallest part of this. It's an incredibly bad decision (but bad decisions are Canonical's specialty)

Alvis · Jun 20, 2019

Windrunner said:
We've had about 15 years of 64bit processors. Enough with this legacy cruft.

You haven't answered my question on why I should be unable to play 32 bit games

zoku88 · Jun 20, 2019

Windrunner said:
Sacrificing everything on the altar of legacy compatibility is why Windows is such a mess.

Windows is a mess because of bad past decisions that they support for legacy reasons.

Having both 32 bit and 64 bit libraries on a system isn't a mess.

Windrunner · Jun 20, 2019

Xharos said:
You haven't answered my question on why I should be unable to play 32 bit games

You can always use a different distro if this is important to you. I won't fault Canonical if they want to move on however.

Sean Mirrsen · Jun 20, 2019

Jonnax said:
Who is going to pay for the maintenance of the old code?

Who's going to pay for updating all the desirable 32-bit software to 64-bit?

Atolm · Jun 20, 2019

Yeah well, this sounds minor because Linux and Mac OS have very limited gaming support, but the day Windows drops 32-bit app support (which hopefully is still ways off due to the business software), it will be something of apocalyptic proportions.

Elfforkusu · Jun 20, 2019

Atolm said:
Yeah well, this sounds minor because Linux and Mac OS have very limited gaming support, but the day Windows drops 32-bit app support (which hopefully is still ways off due to the business software), it will be something of apocalyptic proportions.

tbh I'm not sure Windows ever will, or at least not in the shortsighted way Ubuntu is. There's not really a huge benefit in discontinuing it, and there's an enormous benefit to users in keeping it around.

Jonnax · Jun 20, 2019

Elfforkusu said:
What maintenance are you talking about? The maintenance to repackage libraries for thousands of legacy apps that are abandonware, but still useful to some small subset of people? e.g. accessibility software...

Again, games are the smallest part of this. It's an incredibly bad decision (but bad decisions are Canonical's specialty)

If canonical ship a library as a package they need to ensure that it's patched against security vulnerabilities.

They also have to compile and host the binaries.

What closed source 32bit accessibility software is there? Would it be relevent in 2023, would they even work with Wayland? Should X be used forever because of legacy software?

These legacy applications can be packaged with their dependancies. Why is this so hard to understand?

Xharos said:
You haven't answered my question on why I should be unable to play 32 bit games

This does not make it impossible to play the games.

There are two things here.

One is that they won't be distributing a version of Ubuntu that installs on a 32bit only processor.

And they won't be packaging libraries for 32bit applications.

Theres no need to debate the first one, there are no 32bit only x86 processors for about 15 years.

And if an application requires old libraries then they can be packaged together with the application.

This is a simple solution. Containerisation especially with snaps makes this super easy.

But people want to create drama on the internet.

Elfforkusu · Jun 20, 2019

Jonnax said:
If canonical ship a library as a package they need to ensure that it's patched against security vulnerabilities.

They also have to compile and host the binaries.

What closed source 32bit accessibility software is there? Would it be relevent in 2023, would they even work with Wayland? Should X be used forever because of legacy software?

These legacy applications can be packaged with their dependancies. Why is this so hard to understand?

patching, compiling, hosting the binaries are (1) their job as a distro, and (2) not really that hard to do given they're already doing it for these packages' 64-bit versions.

What is an added burden is testing, and that's presumably why they're killing off support. But that's a shitty reason, just say you aren't going to test 32-bit libraries as thoroughly and put them in a "not thoroughly tested" repo.

I don't have a list of accessibility software, since luckily I don't need to use it (yet). But it exists -- I believe it's basically all windows stuff running via wine. So yes, it'd work with wayland.

Many legacy applications will not be packaged with their dependencies, because not enough people use them. No one is maintaining them. They will languish. Also... why the hell are legacy applications (e.g. games) expected to package 32-bit graphics drivers, glut, gnome, perl, alsa, gtk, etc etc etc -- all these system libraries that realistically should be owned by the system? It's a ridiculous burden to force onto applications, even if they were well-maintained.

tl;dr: Canonical is fucking over their desktop users to save a buck, and in particular those without the expertise to switch to Mint/MX Linux/etc. Presumably they make all their money from corporate clients... I'm not sure what their business model is at this point, but it definitely has nothing to do with their original mission

pksu · Jun 20, 2019

Trying to run older binaries on Linux is already a huge mess due to ABI incompatibilities, it's totally different case than win32. Steam as a dependency solves lots of issues regarding this, not sure about vendor GL implementations etc though.

Jonnax · Jun 20, 2019

Elfforkusu said:
patching, compiling, hosting the binaries are (1) their job as a distro, and (2) not really that hard to do given they're already doing it for these packages' 64-bit versions.

What is an added burden is testing, and that's presumably why they're killing off support. But that's a shitty reason, just say you aren't going to test 32-bit libraries as thoroughly and put them in a "not thoroughly tested" repo.

I don't have a list of accessibility software, since luckily I don't need to use it (yet). But it exists -- I believe it's basically all windows stuff running via wine. So yes, it'd work with wayland.

Many legacy applications will not be packaged with their dependencies, because not enough people use them. No one is maintaining them. They will languish. Also... why the hell are legacy applications (e.g. games) expected to package 32-bit graphics drivers, glut, gnome, perl, alsa, gtk, etc etc etc -- all these system libraries that realistically should be owned by the system? It's a ridiculous burden to force onto applications, even if they were well-maintained.

tl;dr: Canonical is fucking over their desktop users to save a buck, and in particular those without the expertise to switch to Mint/MX Linux/etc. Presumably they make all their money from corporate clients... I'm not sure what their business model is at this point, but it definitely has nothing to do with their original mission

If you want a not throughly tested OS then use Debian.

The idea that a user will apt get a set of packages with a bunch of vulnerabilities either by following or tutorial or through an install script for a game is silly. But there's the PPA concept, so somebody else could do that.

Canonical isn't a charity. They dropped desktop development (Unity 8) and their smartphone work because there wasn't much of a business case.

You as a user with these complaints, have you given a dollar to canonical? A business model of supporting complex requirements for users that are a small percentage who also don't pay any money is laughable.

The money they pull in is from the server and cloud business. Actual paying customers who aren't going to be using 32bit applications.

Also 4 years to work on improving 64bit wine is a long time.

Plus the idea of snaps, flatpack and the other packaging tools. Is that it allows for a base to be prebuilt and imported.

I don't know why you're trying to construct a hypothetical scenario of such a complex application that needs to be run on a modern distro. If it's old, run it in a container, if it hooked into the OS then maybe it's a bad idea to run some closed source abandonware

1-D_FE · Jun 20, 2019

I can't believe people are defending this (general concept) and saying it's good. Yeah, cause let's light on fire any game that wasn't made in the 64-bit era. Games that aren't designed and built around exploitation are crap anyways;)

low-G said:
Time to move on from Ubuntu and Mac OS...

For Apple users, what benefit is this? Save a few megabytes disk space? Silly.

Oh right Apple will be moving on to using their mobile chips in MacOS and not x86.. if you're going to lose compatibility anyways I guess that's fair. But I wouldn't want to use MacOS still....

This has been so obvious for so long. It's going to be funny, though, when they finally make the switch and still sell their "computers" for a fortune.

Deleted member 1849 · Jun 21, 2019

I thought this was interesting. Wine devs seemingly not happy:

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

This also appeared on my Twitter feed this morning:

elenarie · Jun 21, 2019

Nappael said:
I thought this was interesting. Wine devs seemingly not happy:

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

This also appeared on my Twitter feed this morning:

I don't see what's the issue there.

The apps and games were for X versions of Ubuntu and MacOS, and work just fine on those.
One should not expect that their content will magically work on untested and unsupported future OS versions.
If you want to make sure that's the case, you do the work yourself.

ascagnel · Jun 21, 2019

Pokemaniac said:
Cutting off support now is a very boneheaded, Apple-esque move.

Apple is in a different situation than Canonical in this case, and Canonical is being stupid. Apple has already spun up ARM-based processors for their mobile stuff that are way more performant than what Intel's been putting out in the past few years, and have been working towards a clean(-ish?) transition between the two architectures on macOS for a while now (via stuff like Bitcode). Canonical doesn't really make hardware, they don't design their own CPUs, their mobile platform was DoA, and they've got people doing a decent chunk of the work upstream; I don't see the benefit for them except maybe some ill-defined cost-cutting measures.

TheMan · Jun 21, 2019

I don't understand why people make themselves jump through hoops to game on Linux.

Deleted member 1849 · Jun 21, 2019

TheMan said:
I don't understand why people make themselves jump through hoops to game on Linux.

Some of us prefer Linux for other reasons (less tracking, better customization, full control of what runs on your system at every level, ethical stance on software freedom, familiarity with the workflow/tools, etc), and would prefer not to reboot our systems back into Windows any time we want to play something. Others just don't want Microsoft being the only option for PC gaming.

It doesn't even need much hoop jumping these days. Thanks to Proton/Steam Play and other developments over the past few years, the Linux gaming experience is actually pretty nice now. There's not much I want to play that I can't, and most of the time it's as simple as running the game on Steam.

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