Wine couldn't run 32 bit games without 32 bit libraries. They added experimental support for WoW64 a few years ago and now it's considered stable. There was probably just no rush to make Steam 64 bit if it still needed 32 bit libraries for older games.

The advantage to Steam going 64-bit is that most people can now remove all their 32-bit libraries.

Previously you needed 32-bit libraries for most of the actual games you ran through Steam, so it didn't really matter if Steam used them too.

Back when the very first Linux port of Steam was released, there were a couple of Atom CPUs still 32 bit and Valve is relatively slow to change the fundamentals of the Steam client.

IMO one of be bigger mistakes Valve made and also the reason why I switched to the Steam Flatpak early.

They now have AI agents to hold their hand while going through everything, perhaps.

Yeah. My rig is janky but it's still an exciting time.

Moore's Law finally caught up with our ability to make rocks calculate for us. It was going to happen eventually, I find it somewhat comforting that hardware has finally plateaued, and will only get incremental changes for a while. It means that the next computer I build, I can expect it to last for multiple decades, rather than just one.

Each "bit" in the architecture is mainly related to how many different memory positions you can address with a CPU opcode (i.e. an assembly command) that needs to access memory or with a CPU register that holds an memory address (so an 8 bit register can only address 256 memory positions, a 16 bit one 65,538 memory positions, a 32 bit one 4,294,967,296 memory positions and so on) - basically every additional bit in the register size of a CPU that addresses memory roughly doubles the memory that CPU can access and thus use (not considering hacks to go around those limits, such as the Spectrum 128K had).

Meanwhile Moore's Law predicts that "the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years" which for integrated circuits roughly means that every two years the amount of memory that can be in the same integrated circuit area doubles.

So if Moore's Law kept working, each architecture bit roughly gives you two more years until the availability of memory catches up- This means that the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit architectures per Moore's Law gave us 64 years until we have to move to an architecture with more bits because memory available is so big that CPUs are unable to use so much memory.

Were we are now, 64 bits is enough to address 8 Exabytes of memory.

That said, extrapolating from the current trend in growth of memory in PCs, we will reach the point when we will start hitting the constraints of that in ... NEVER - thanks to the AI bubble the newer PCs are coming out with the same or less memory than the previous generation, so the trend of available memory is not upwards but downwards.

640 bit ought to be enough for everyone!

Fwiw, CPUs/GPUs use 128bit wide buses (eg 4060, I think) and wider. So you're kinda there already.

64-bit here refers to the size of the general purpose registers; but wider (larger) registers are common too in chips that are still referred to as x86_64.

The benefit to/for Steam itself is marginal. The benefit to the entire community is significant, because there's now an entire metric shitload of obsolete 32-bit shit that can be safely deleted and forgotten for 95% of the Linux world and efforts can be focused on things that actually matter in the 64-bit world. The entire 32-bit ecosystem of libraries and system layers still had to be maintained and supported basically only for Steam's sake, Steam was the only thing still using them for the vast majority of people. It's not that Steam needs 64-bit, it's that 64-bit is the standard now and has been for a long time, and Steam was the only thing that had no 64-bit version.

It's kind of like cutting loose the anchor that the community has been dragging around everywhere for years for no purpose. It was a totally unnecessary effort that just caused suffering and added no value.

Started writing a lengthy response, then came across this Wikipedia link which slamdunks it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/64-bit_computing#Pros_and_cons 😅

One of the benefits is only needing to have 64 bit libraries. With this change most people can drop their 32 bit stuff.

Bits are literally "binary digits". So more bits means bigger numbers. The reason you get more memory, is because when the code says "put this data in memory spot (number bigger than 32 bits)" .. you cant with only 32 bits. How do you represent that number.

Imagine that you want to put something in memory spot 150, but you only have 2 digits. You cant. Bumping it up to 4 digits, you can say "put this data in memory address 0150" and its fine. "bigger numbers == more addresses == more places to put stuff"

So anywhere you need a number bigger than 32 bit represents, you can either just use a 64 bit number, or do a bunch of shenanigans. Those shenanigans require extra calculations inevitably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,147,483,647 If youve ever seen this number before, it's probably because of a 32 bit limitation. It shows up all sorts of weird ways.

Bigger numbers here aren't about taking up more space, just representing literally bigger numbers. "9999" only takes up 2x as much "space" as "99" but it repesents a number ~100x bigger.

Sorry, I'm tired and rambling.

One of the reasons Steam held out for so long was that a lot of the games they host are 32-bit only. Games are built by a company, many of which have gone belly-up, so rebuilding the game from scratch is impossible. Making Steam 32 bit even though it could be 64 bit is a really effective way to guarantee a large chunk of their legacy products will still run. In a lot of ways, because of the nature of the gaming industry, Steam has it worse than most package managers/app stores.

It really depends on how many bugs their are. But I'd expect it in a couple of months at the most

I was about to reply here, but got deeper and deeper into the News archives. So I decided to make a new post instead. Link from lemmy ml's perspective: https://lemmy.ml/post/54090929 or from lemmy ca's perspective: https://lemmy.ca/post/72437677 I still don't understand how to link correctly. You can also find the article "Analyzing update intervals of Steam Client (Steam News Hub)" in community !steam@lemmy.ml .

I'm also on Arch btw, btw. 😆

This was basically one of the big reasons I opted to install Steam via Flatpak.

No. https://github.com/ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux/issues/13015

If you use Proton with WOW64, then yes. Or maybe no. I don't know what do you have installed on your machine. 32bit Linux apps were a thing.

Same question

No because there's the Steam update .sh script. AKA voluntary RCE.

To me those were always the same, practically speaking.

I assume we'll still need the 32 bit libraries to play 32 bit games, which at this point is probably just older games that will never be updated. I guess it depends on what you like to play, but I'll be stuck with them for some time yet.

You still won't get rid off xwayland because there are native linux games that use X11, but xwayland can be moved from compositor into xwayland-satellite thing

Huh, I didn't know gifs could have audio.

No, it’s about bits /s

wrong, instead it is still 32 bit

With this first part of your sentence you are directly contradicting the words in the primary source, so do you have good evidence for this?

For reference here's the relevant part from the primary source:

Linux

• The Steam client is now a 64bit application.
• The Steam client now runs inside a Steam Runtime container.
  • This will help the Steam client provide a more consistent experience across multiple distributions. This is the same technology used by Steam games.

Well given that GOG games have nothing to do with Steam I'd imagine it means nothing for them.