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Fedora Linux devs discuss dropping 32-bit packages - potentially bad news for Steam gamers (www.gamingonlinux.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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[–] 35 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Meh: It's inevitable. It's really Valve that we should blame for dragging their feet for so long.

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago (4 children)

    I wonder how much power Valve even has here. I mean, we're talking about Windows compatibility. How many Windows games can run properly in a 64-bit WINE environment?

    Dropping 32-bit support has to happen eventually, but there's bound to be collateral damage. It wasn't a painless change even on macOS, which is generally a more tightly controlled "adapt or die" platform.

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  • [–] 24 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

    I think Wine has had WOW support for some time and it seems it will be the default at some time (arch moving to wow64).

    Edit: What is WOW64

    WoW64

    All transitions from Windows to Unix code go through the NT syscall interface. This is a major milestone that marks the completion of the multi-year re-architecturing work to convert modules to PE format and introduce a proper boundary between the Windows and Unix worlds.

    All modules that call a Unix library contain WoW64 thunks to enable calling the 64-bit Unix library from 32-bit PE code. This means that it is possible to run 32-bit Windows applications on a purely 64-bit Unix installation. This is called the new WoW64 mode, as opposed to the old WoW64 mode where 32-bit applications run inside a 32-bit Unix process.

    The new WoW64 mode is not yet enabled by default. It can be enabled by passing the --enable-archs=i386,x86_64 option to configure. This is expected to work for most applications, but there are still some limitations, in particular:

    Lack of support for 16-bit code. Reduced OpenGL performance and lack of ARB_buffer_storage extension support.

    The new WoW64 mode finally allows 32-bit applications to run on recent macOS versions that removed support for 32-bit Unix processes.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    I'm curious why 16-bit support is being dropped. Too much additional codebase complexity for such a small use case, or are there technical reasons it's difficult to support in a 64-bit environment that somehow don't exist in a 32-bit one? Or is it simply not implemented yet due to a lack of dev time/interest in the feature?

    I know 16-bit programs are incredibly niche these days, but I'd be way more comfortable with enterprises running their ancient software in a secure, up-to-date WINE environment as opposed to an actual Windows 3.x one with its nonexistent security. Even in an isolated VM, that kind of setup is one misconfiguration away from disaster.

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