PieFedBazzite founder might shutdown whole project if Fedora drops support for 32 bit packages
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mr_MADAFAKAhttps://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/0023226d-7644-49b2-81de-33862dd38a97.png
As reiterated by the OP, the proposal is just a proposal and was proposed with heaps of lead time probably because they expected it to be controversial.
As also mentioned, heaps of volunteer time is spent maintaining the packages where most are barely used (even for gaming).
However, it does not seem like there is a viable alternative. Many comments say the suggested alternative, WINE's WoW64, does not work for all games.
I can see both sides here. Fedora maintainers says "this is so much work!" and (mostly) gamers saying "But older games will stop working!".
The response from the Bazzite guy does seem overblown to me. I would think the first step is to work out the impact, as I haven't seen anyone quantify what proportion of games are affected and if there are alternatives like emulation.
Ok but is that because of fundamental limitations, or just because of bugs?
One's easier to fix than the other.
If it works like real WoW64, then 16 bit applications won't work ever but 32 bit applications that don't work will be because of fixable bugs.
It seems to me that 16-bit applications are already basically broken with 32-bit wine if you're running a 64-bit kernel, by default it places extra restrictions over what the hardware already does to prevent apps from loading 16-bit code entirely.
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/FAQ#16-bit-applications-fail-to-start
Guessing that's why they don't feel it's that important to continue supporting, seems a VM is the future for these apps.
Yeah most 16 bit stuff is old enough there's already a mature reimplementation of the game engine or old enough that it'll run nicely in a translation layer or VM
From what I've seen if an online store provides a 16 bit classic without a reimplementation, it's bundled with dosbox.
Of course, I'm pretty much blanking on any classic Win16 titles of note. As far as I recall the significant games just kept being DOS games with at most launch from icon. I suppose original Myst because QuickTime, but they released a Win32 build. But this 16 bit stuff was a speculation, this is about the 32 bit stuff that isn't reasonably accommodated without a 32 bit runtime and certain bits being at odds with Flatpak isolation architecture.
AFAIK, you couldn't run 16-bit software on native Windows x64, so Wine is exhibiting the same behavior.
Anyway, these 16-bit softwares are old enough that running them in DOSBox or something like that won't show any significant performance penalty through emulation vs translation.
I always thought it was purely a hardware limitation, but reading up on it I found it's actually just "virtual 8086 mode" that was dropped, 16-bit protected mode is still available even when running the CPU in "long mode".
So it rules out DOS apps, but 16bit Win 3.x apps should still run. But it's probably a compatibility minefield, and even MS decided it wasn't important (iirc the only thing they kept around was support for 16-bit app installers, but by internally swapping them out with 32-bit versions when run, since it was apparently common for 32-bit 9x apps to still use 16-bit installers so they could show a proper error message when run under Win 3.x)
I'm wondering what the problem even is. I mean, can't you just put all the stuff relevant to 32 bit gaming into a 'retro-gaming' package and be like "there, now if you want updates, better find maintainers"?
If you have an old game, chances are you won't need many new features. Only problem could be other packages or the kernel becoming incompatible. I don't know how relevant that is in this instance.
Yea dependency management without updates is like 80% of the work that goes into package maintenance
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The flatpak should still work. Though I agree it's a problem.
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The two solutions I've seen presented in the thread for the Steam problem are to run Steam in a flatpak or a distrobox. I'm not sure if using distrobox has the same issues as flatpak.
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See. This is why I game only on Windows. There’s never any controversy or issues there. /s
I’ll see myself out now.
I was this 🤏 close to a reflexive downvote
After Bazzite I went to Garuda, is also gaming focused and has a handy helper app that helps you install common software, run updates, and more.
If you need a new distro it's worth a look.
THERE'S DOZENS OF US, DOZENS!!
Hell yeah brother, make it 11 of us!
💪💪💪💪
I go with CachyOs
Ik ik the compiler optimizations only give a minor difference and maybe major in latency but am just comfy with it.
I just like how minimal is the distro
Cachyos has some great default setup choices too. Limine with btrfs + snapper, all preconfigured.. spot on!
Ohh yeah true I forgot they offer alterntive bootloaders that arent grub
Grub was really the only option if you wanted a snapper rollback though.
But now Limine is the new choice for me.
Systemd-boot doesn’t play with snapper.
True but systemd-boot also worked for me on opensuse?
Interesting. I wonder if opensuse wrote up their own solution to this. I did find a post from Cachyos Petr last year responding that he’d like to see more how opensuse boatloader is managed.
I only ever used grub with tumbleweed.
Why not just install the CachyOS kernel onto Fedora (like me)? I then deleted the stock kernle and now make sure to use --exclude=kernel* when updating. Works like a charm.
Ik
My go-to too.
Isn't Garuda also based on Fedora?
Edit: I was thinking of Nobara.
god these names just sound the fucking same, garudo nobara banuda ronada, talking about linux gaming distros is liable to summon a demon
I guarantee you will summon a number of daemons running any of them though!
Genuinely funny comment, thank you.
bapacka balunch
bapick banick..
BA'NOODLE
Honestly go for EnOS. Garuda is neat and has a good default setup, but they've gone a little far with their modifications imo
Is that the whole name? Because searching shows YenOS, EndeavorOS, EventOS, EndlessOS and one ENOS based off Xubuntu (a single 2020 mention for a 0.4 version)
EnOS is generally EndeavorOS
Oh? I'm still a Linux noob, educate me.
I just don't like their candy design that much and it's effort to undo post-installation
I assume you are taking about desktop environment stuff? I installed the xfce version and it's been pretty streamlined.
Well, I'm talking about their pre-installed software and custom theming
That's fair, but as a Linux beginner, I was happy to have more software than I needed at the start rather than not enough. If you know what you are doing, I could see how you could have a different opinion.
There is a lite version, but sure whatever you prefer.
Yeah, but it's still more work to remove KDE and things... EnOS has an installer that allows you to cherry-pick your preferred packages
PikaOS is Debian based, and they've built the deps they need for Steam in 32-bit, so it's not the end of the world AFAIK. GloriousEggroll seems to be part of it too, so if any refugees are looking for something not Fedora-based there you go. Although his efforts for now seem focused more on Nobara (which is Fedora-based) maybe this will cause some shake-ups there too. I can see Pika is already picking up speed from this though, the Discord is super active.
Even if Fedora doesn't ever drop support I think even considering the possibility is shaking people's confidence in using it as a base going forward, sort of like how Unity's quickly-walked-back disasters drove people irrevocably towards Godot and other engines. Arch and Arch-based distros are probably starting to look much more appealing too.
God fucking damnit, I finally find a Linux OS that gels with me and I find this shit....
Note that this is just a proposal that the Fedora community wants feedback on.
Even *if* it does go ahead, this is minimum 1 year away from happening.
Tbh I wouldn't be surprised if this was meant as a "hurry up and move away from Steam *still* being a 32-bit app, Valve!" bit of brinkmanship.
I thought the Steam Linux client was already native 64-bit?
If not, maybe this is the kind of push needed to get them to actually go full 64-bit?
It’s still 32bit. i’ve heard it guessed that Valve does this on purpose because so many games are still 32bit and Wine/Proton/etc aren’t fully compatible yet. What does it matter if Steam works and most of the Steam library does not.
Seems like a good reason for the Wine / Proton WoW64 subsystem to improve.
If this happens, give Fedora itself a try. The only issue I've had with it is that my video card drivers didnt work right out of the gate and took a little bit of playing to get perfect.
Fedora is literally the source of this problem. Bazzite is based on Fedora.
Been with fedora for years, but fedora is the problem, so that would be pretty pointless.
I think I can hear Bringus sobbing somewhere
the return of HoloISO never booting up
I should've figured people on Lemmy would love his content lol
Did he elaborate on why? Is it really that integral to have 32bit tools?
Afaik Steam still heavily relies on 32-Bit. And bazzite's only purpose is Steam.
The comments in the thread don't mention Steam itself, but it's that running all the 32 bit games will become a problem. Steam's flatpak packages the 32 bit packages so that can get around this change, but the flatpak is not official and does not support all features. Steam themselves only provide the RPM for Fedora.
steam package from rpmfusion is not official
Ah you're right. It seems Steam only provides a *.deb as far as I can tell.
Ah yeah. Would be unfortunate. Bazzite was the least amount of setup i've ever had to do with linux and is the only repo I could recommend to someone non-technical
There are others like it and some better for those who are both non-technical and non-gamers. What you’re looking for is “immutable distro” https://itsfoss.com/immutable-linux-distros/
which is a distro of Linux that is very user friendly, much like Windows, in not allowing major changes to the OS. SteamOS is this as well.
It makes setup and updates much easier to manage and easier for users to use because it just works most of the time.
I tried fedora kinoite and the experience is much worse than bazzite. The nvidia drivers ware a pain to install on kinote but bazzite just provides an image with them already configured.
That makes me sad. Bazzite just refused to install on my new laptop (as did several others, amusingly) so it was back to manjaro for me.
If bazzites only purpose is steam then it would’ve probably "died" anyway when Holo Desktop releases
Yes, and from what I understood:
Oh wow, if steam is still 32 bit, forget the offshoots, fedora itself won't be worth using. I'm on fedora but if I can't run steam, then I'm finding a new distro.
On the flip side, what's the reason they want to drop 32-bit support, given steam depends on it, which they should understand means it's integral to the size of their current userbase?
People just ditching Fedora for another distro is exactly what is being warned about on the linked forum thread, should the Fedora team decide to go through with it.
As for the why; the Fedora team says that 32bit libraries are annoying to maintain and that they can cut it out to save on time and resources. They consider 32bit old and no longer relevant.
However, others have said that if 32bit is still being used (also for none-game-related projects) then it's still relevant and should still be maintained. Also that Fedora should develop according to what the user base wants, and not pull a Microsoft/Apple and force want they want on the user base.
This is why I personally stopped using anything from Canonical.
Lol if you think gamers, especially on fedora, are anything more than a rounding error in the total user pool
For those that think the response is overblown, from the thread:
It's a big deal because disallowing the native steam build would make it nearly impossible to run bazzite in a SteamOS-like experience (which accounts for 2/3s of bazzite's users)
Could Valve make Gamescope work with Flattpak ?
Dammit - found Bazzite one week ago and love it - now its embroiled in a controversy.
Dw, this will pass - there is too much passion in the project, and too many with stakes in it too. If it is installed on so many people's systems, we will have many people eager to see this continue also.
Same here. Nobara was too glitchy so I switched to Bazzite and love it so far. Sigh.
If it helps at all some of the comments in the linked discussion mentions it's at minimum a year out
I would be shocked if Fedora went through with it. If anyone remembers canonical tried to do this with you one to some years ago. They backed down then after push back as well.
What. The. Fuck.
Speech to text is my guess. You one to = Ubuntu?
pre-size pan go lean
Hear me out... But should we be asking why there are so many things, steam included, that are still on 32b libraries?
I mean the answer is pretty easy: video games generally have a long shelf life and no maintenance at some point after they’re released.
Your compatibility layers can be 64b, however, and support those 32b games that don't even run natively on that hardware anyway.
That explains the games, but not the steam binary right? If the steam binary didn't break, and 32b games did, that'd be a lot less of an issue.
Because there’s no incentive for valve to spend time on that i guess
Instead of shutting down why not choose another distro base
Probably a lot of time and work to do so, they've spent a lot of time learning what tweaks Fedora needs.
Makes sense
Why not ride streams coat-tails and switch to arch?
I'd not really paid attnetion until this thread and assumed it was an Arch derivative becase of Steam OS. TIL
The tiny bit of gaming I do is in my main install is LMDE using Steam, it works fine.
I went from Windows to arch after waiting for a while for steam to release the desktop os. No real problems gaming aside from anti-cheat.
Or Debian. It still supports MIPS64 officially and 68K unofficially. x86 isn't going anywhere for a *long* time.
The only notable thing about Bazzite is that it's built on top of Fedora Atomic, making it immutable like SteamOS.
Without that, it's just a regular old distro with some opinions about which software should be preinstalled.
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popos is
How feasible is rebasing bazzite onto a different distro?
They fact they based it on Fedora in the first place seemed like a stupid choice, but I've been biased against Fedora for a long time lol.
IMO they should have based it off Arch or Ubuntu to align with the Steamdeck or SteamOS
Could you explain why?
I dunno, the concept of an immutable OS is definitely interesting, and I don't believe Arch or Ubuntu currently offer that.
dang. That was supposed to be my go to OS once I got my data backed up.
any chance someone could recommend another distro for me?
it would be on my Laptop. Fairly new, Intel IRIS cpu, no dedicated GPU (can get specs if needed).
I'm going into UNI for comp sci next year
I want KDE as a requirement.
I would prefer it to be arch based so my knowledge can be transferred to messing with my steam deck, but not a requirement.
I also tinkered my previous distros to death by messing with terminal commands I didn't know (it's how you learn!). I would prefer something to back it up if I accidentally delete a million packages like last time but I don't know if that would be something dependent on the OS or just a program.
I don't really understand what immutable is, but I think my SteamDeck is immutable so I think I want it 🤷♀️
any recommendations/tips would be appreciated 🩷
Bazzite is still currently a great distro.
If Fedora drops support for 32bit packages, Steam, Proton, and more will no longer work, and all Fedora derivatives become useless for gaming.
Other than Bazzite, openSUSE Tumbleweed and Kubuntu Minimal are both great choices.
That is until Valve make the Linux Steam client proper 64-bit (which hopefully will happen sooner than later), and Wine/Proton don't have to depend on 32-bit/multilib at the Linux host level, that's what the WoW64 subsystem is for.
That will definitely break Linux-native 32-bit games though.
Which is why Valve hasn’t adopted 64-bit. What good is Steam if an enormous number of Steam games stop working? Until WoW64 improves significantly, dropping 32bit support on Linux is a non-starter.
As long as WoW64 is not ready for primetime, I agree.
I've appreciated endeavourOS's installer and defaults. It's Arch-based and has an option to install KDE/Plasma as the default desktop environment. I only back up my home directory, but I'm sure there's systemwide options, like btrfs snapshots (although that's a whole thing you'd need to test/verify). It's not an immutable distro. And, being Arch-based, it gets frequent updates. I've had a handful of issues from a package being too cutting-edge, but often it gets resolved within a few days at most with an update. Never had something totally break my system that I didn't cause myself (mostly symlink traversal). Just read up on
pacman's flags (particularly-Rflags, like-dd,-s,-n).just try cachyos off a usb, it has a graphical installer, it boots into plasma off the usb, was easier than windows install
You can grab flatpak and snap support on i easilyt, half my apps are from flathub, and debtap for debs (I wanted to maximize flexibility) I use faugus launcher for non steam games, works well with pirated stuff (opens stuff that wouldnt open otherwise, and is instant)
Garuda is built on the zen kernel and ships with KDE, I have been using it for a year now and it meets all my needs.
Why would they not just use an Arch base like the real SteamOS does?
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That's reasonable. Thanks!
i think the effort has already been made, unless i'm misunderstanding what cachyos is
I used EndeavorOS in the past which was a successor to AntergOS, both arch based, with gui installer and easy nvidia driver setup, they both worked like a charm without any issues (unlike fucking Manjaro).
It's interesting to hear how people's experiences differ so much. I couldn't get endeavor to work on my laptop (absolutely nothing would launch after the install), but manjaro was the definition of 'it just works' for me. I'd love to stop having things break because manjaro holds back updates for a week.
When Redhat went Fedora, I learned Debian and Ubuntu. When they decided to flush CentOS, I GTFO even professionally and stayed out of their ancestral distros.
Don't get me wrong, I'm down with change and updating, but they are very focused on making things better/easier for themselves without worries about who they're supposed to be supporting.
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I really feel for the Bazzite developer over the possible Fedora decision. That just plain sucks. Fedora was never a big gaming distro though. Hindisght is 20/20 and all that, but why pick that one as base in the first place?
Bazzite is based on Universal Blue, which is based on Fedora Silverblue, which is the first immutable, atomic Linux distro. The immutable nature of Bazzite is the point of it’s existence.
What's the immutable part of Fedora, compared to other distros? Asking because, well, dropping 32bit support is a significant change and something that would make dummies like me not understand what's immutable.
The underlying system is managed by OSTree, which handles the entire system instead of individual packages. You cannot simply change any part of the system, it’s all or nothing. This means stability, security, and effortless rollbacks if anything goes wrong. If you really want to tinker, you can create layers that sit on top of the base system, but it still doesn’t modify the system. It’s a very different way of thinking about how the system works. It’s like working with containers.
Man that sounds so nice for my laptop.
It is. I did that and will keep it even if fedora drops 32 bit functionality since I don't need anything 32 bit on my laptop. If bazzite ends I can just rebase to a different variant. The gaming computer I may not have the choice
We shouldn't be talking about stuff like this here. It spooks the noobs.
Glad I didnt install bazzite.
what did you go with?
I've heard CachyOS is good but I'm not the one to ask.
CachyOS is great, much better than Bazzite or Nobara IMO. Been daily driving it on my gaming rig with an NVIDIA GPU for ~9mo. Great performamce, no complaints.
6 months with all amd, no issues caused by cachyos (some caused by me having multiple des lol) I did start using faugus launcher for games and it seems to perform better than what came with it, at least for pirated non steam stuff.
Ugghhh, I *just* got it set up with arr stack on my media computer. Can someone more familiar with the trajectory of the project tell me the odds of this actually happening? Or is it more of a PR move to get people's attention on the Fedora project?
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Wouldn't the Steam Flatpak still work?
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And what if Valve starts releasing 64bit version?
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So it's actually the whole cause of the issue? If Valve shifts to 64bit then there would be no issue? Or is there a limitation that would then prevent 32bit games from working?
Obviously yes or obviously no?
Can't Bazzite just permanently branch away from Fedora?
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I use Cachy and love Cachy, but it's fundamentally very different from Bazzite. Bazzite is an immutable distribution. Cachy is a rolling release. Those are like polar opposites.
lmao hope this amounts to a bunch of linux newbies learning what distro hopping is.
Why would distro hopping be a good thing? I thought that was a problem, hoping from one distro to the next not settling on one. I always see people encouraging newbies to stick to one and learn how Linux works.
its a important part of the learning process going to far in and needing to get out
it's part of 'fucking around and finding out'
Until they distro hop back to Windows because they just want shit to work.
Skill issue.
Year of the desktop when?
Nobara gave me a month to start
So was Bazzite founded by someone’s mate Baz or what?
bazzite is a mineral that forms neat crystals. It used to be the first search result but the distro has the first page of search results now.
Throwing a tantrum isn't how to get what you want. This is a common behavior in the OSS world from wannabe BDFLs. Linus Torvalds or Guido van Rossum *earned* that title through merit, not through the simple luck of your side project going viral.
Bazzite is just Fedora Atomic with some extra preinstalled software. If it dies, it'll hurt the community of Linux gamers who picked it for whatever reason, but it won't make Fedora maintain 32 bit packages forever.
Nobody's throwing a tantrum. They're just saying they can't reasonably serve their purpose if they lose 32-bit support. A project so heavily based on other projects is subject to upstream whims, and they probably don't have the manpower to do anything about it.
I'm not sure exactly what you expect of him?
It's not a tantrum, just a statement of limitation. The primary reason for Bazzite to exist is to have a SteamOS-like Fedora. He mentions, in depth, how the 'simple' answer about using flatpak doesn't work, because flatpak imposes isolation in ways that are incompatible with the use case.
His options seem to be to be "polite" and quiet right up until the change gets approved and implemented and only *then* yank the rug out from his community, or make the broader community know the implications of removed 32-bit userspace support.
This seems to be the whole point of soliciting feedback, to know what you are likely to break. It would be supremely odd if you make a proposal, solicit feedback, and call any mention of a bad consequence a 'tantrum' when that was the whole point of framing it as a proposal.
Seems like he needs either Steam to go 64-bit or for Fedora to keep 32-bit since flatpak can't help and, presumably, he doesn't want to try to take on the maintenance burden of trying to carry forward Fedora's 32-bit rpms for the same reason Fedora is trying to get out of carrying them forward. Assuming the broad community decides Fedora 32-bit userspace is still needed, then it's far less incremental work for Fedora to maintain along 64-bit than it is to independently add it back.
Shit, now i gotta do the distribution shuffle again.
It's way too early to make that call. This is a proposal for collecting feedback. I am not sure if this has been proposed before, but I would guess you would make these proposals from time to time to gauge the feedback, and when you see support for keeping it fall to a low level you can finally make the jump. As one of the comments in the thread mentions, now might not be the right time but you can't keep supporting it forever. Eventually you push 32 bit apps into emulators like what happened with 16 bit.
Too early, as the other comment said... However, if this happens, I'd hope that the SteamOS desktop image will be officially available which seems pretty similar to Bazzite, but based on Arch instead of Fedora.
where we goin
Over there!
base your whole project on a corporate Nazi shill company like IBM and find out.
watchu talkin bout mate
Red hat is owned by IBM which is a Nazi enabling mega corpo
I mean companies by definition surrender to power for the sake of profit. I don't see how that makes them any better or worse than any other company that functions under our current system
Well then you should consider some reading on the issue.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
Yeah, no I'm aware of their history. More to the point it has little to nothing to do with Bazzite being negatively effected by Fedora dropping support for 32 bit. It's not like 32 bit Fedora systems are keeping American immigrants from being deported and by deprecating them IBM is returning to their Nazi roots
it's about using a platform that's owned by a corporate entity that will do *anything* for more profit.
IBM is known for doing whatever they want, whenever they want.
I have zero sympathy for a project that leverages tooling from a vendor with the kind of reputation IBM has.
that said, someone better suited for the project will fork it and it will carry on, just might lose some momentum.