PieFedFedora Linux devs discuss dropping 32-bit packages - potentially bad news for Steam gamers
cm0002www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/06/fedora-linux-devs…
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RiskableMeh: It's inevitable. It's really Valve that we should blame for dragging their feet for so long.
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.
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
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.
I think Wine has had WOW support for some time
Wine has two forms of WoW64. Old WoW64 uses 32-bit libraries and has been around for a long time.
New WoW64 (first available in Wine 9.0 if built with a special option) works without 32-bit libraries, but is still incomplete. It cannot yet replace old WoW64 everywhere, and even where it can, it reduces performance in some APIs. (For example, OpenGL.)
It will eventually make sense to drop the old one, but doing so now would be premature.
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.
MudManI wouldn't expect anything ready any time soon. Especially when you look at Valve's own stats where Fedora doesn't even register in the top 11 distributions used on Steam. Although, we don't know what distros make up the 7% for the Steam Flatpak - but that's not supported by Valve anyway.
Isn't Bazzite built on Fedora Silverblue and installs the Steam Flatpak? I could take a guess.
Isn’t Bazzite built on Fedora Silverblue
Kinda.
installs the Steam Flatpak?
Actually no. Bazzite installs Steam from the RPM Fusion repo.
As for an attempt to shed light on why Fedora is absent from Steam's numbers, see this comment. Finally, perhaps this is worth looking into to see how big Fedora's gaming community is compared to the rest of its users.
Right, Steam is baked into Bazzite, not installed on top. I stand corrected.
The first set of numbers you link match my intuitions about what's happening to the Steam data. The second seems... less reliable, given the methodology, and don't say much about Fedora gamers in particular. The overall takeaways about the size of Fedora desktop do make sense to me, though.
To complete the cryptic "kinda" answer, because you made me look it up, their Gnome variation is built from Silverblue and they have a KDE variant built from Kinoite. Fedora Atomic either way, for our purposes here.
It's just dropping them from distribution, I think it's a good idea to separate this codebase before 2038.
The Unix epoch problem is completely unrelated to a program being 32-bit or not. The architecture affects the maximum addressable memory space, not the size of individual types. You could easily define and use a 128-bit type in a 16-bit environment, for example.
The epoch problem is simply due to a bad design call a long time ago - one that proved foundational and incredibly difficult to change once it'd become an entrenched standard. They could have made timestamps 64-bit at the time, and probably would have if they'd known their work would survive the several decades it'd take for that decision to pay off.
woelkchenI was using Flathub's Steam years ago already to avoid installing any 32bit system packages. Works fine. This change is no problem at all.
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Maybe Steam could just bundle the needed 32 bit libs for Fedora until they can get a 64 bit only version ready.
Does the Steam Flatpak already do that or would it need to be changed to do that?
Flatpaks don't use system libraries.
Meaning the libraries should already be included in the Flatpak right?
Sorry, I'm a noob trying to understand what the possible solutions are.
Doesn't Steam run basically everything, including the client itself, inside the Steam Container Runtime now? No Steam games, native or not, use the system libraries anymore. I know I occasionally need to wait a couple of seconds after an update for it to update the Steam Container Runtime before even starting the client, which makes me think that they run the client in the container as well. I think the only real 32-bit dependency it has on the system is the user space graphics driver.
What makes you think that? I don't remember any announcements to that effect.
Last time I checked, Steam used pressure-vessel (the container) only for games, not for itself. But I haven't been following changes in that area lately.
Through some script sleuthing, I did discover that Steam ships several of its own 32-bit and 64-bit libraries, and that paths to both are added to
LD_LIBRARY_PATH(search path for library files) when the client is launched by the Steam Runtime, but many files (specifically the Steam Runtime) are only present as 32-bit binaries in~/.local/share/Steam/ubuntu12_32.Whether the Steam client uses those is a question someone else less sleep-deprived can answer.
I've been running Steam as a Flatpak for a long time, it works just fine regardless of the underlying distro. Don't panic.
Has flatpak/snap fixed the screen lease issue for vr yet? Had to install the version off steam for vr when I set it up
Sorry, I don't have VR gear.
As a VR user, some of my games work as well as the flat games do (my god did proton do a damn good job on the flat games to the point I keep forgetting what distro I am using until I look at the "start/task bar") but some VR games refuse to load, others the visuals are extremely weird or darker than on windows (sharp light lines from ray tracing I assume or maybe dlss stuff), and some don't have the 1080p crispness I am used to on the monitor/in video playback from windows. I am confident these issues will be addressed as soon as they are able, hopefully before 10 is killed in the back alley, til then it's a duel boot for me.
Yes, I spelled it the way I did ;)
https://lvra.gitlab.io/docs/fossvr/monado/
Highly recommend ditching SteamVR and using Monado on Linux. Envision makes it super easy.
I'll look into this tonight, ty
This would be a stunning own goal by Red Hat (and let's face it, they are the largest driving force behind Fedora, if not in complete and total control of the project). Steam and gaming have brought so many new users to Linux - maybe even doubled the entire userbase - that if anything, they should be doing all they can to support it even better if they really want to increase the size of the userbase.
Even if flatpak is still an option, it will still drive a lot of new and existing users to use non Fedora-based distros, which would be sad for the project. I myself have never been a Fedora user, but I'm really grateful to see a lot of the positive things they do for the Linux community, so this would be a very sad step in my opinion. On the other hand, it would make me even happier if we see more users switching to Debian-based distros instead.
Damnit I just installed Fedora and it’s the best experience I’ve had lately. Works better than Bazzite and Cachy. Sigh.
It's really unlikely this will become an issue. Especially not one without an easy solution. Fedora is a very popular distro.
I *strongly* doubt that they'd render Steam not runnable on their distro.
🤞
It's a proposal, not a for sure thing yet.
Also, does anyone seriously think they'd do this without some sort of carve out for Steam to work? I can't imagine a worse idea at this time than for a desktop oriented distro to break the gaming use case that hard.
Bazzite is Fedora tho?...
It is a modified version of their immutable variant and it runs poorly on my hardware. 🤷♂️
I am curious to know how it “works better”?
Bazzite for example runs poorly on my hardware. Video playback in browsers is super laggy/choppy/stuttery. I use the same browser in Fedora proper and it’s smooth.
As for Cachy, I know it’s meant for gaming but my games ran significantly worse than in both Bazzite and Fedora proper.
For my hardware setup, Fedora proper is the best balance between usability and gaming performance.
Thanks for sharing! I honestly thought Bazzite was fedora with a few more packages on the top, but your issue sounds interesting
Bazzite is actually not even Fedora directly but instead it’s part of the UBlue distribution that uses Fedora immutable as its base.
I guess think how Linux Mint uses Ubuntu base but Ubuntu uses Debian as its base.
It is a variant of a variant basically. Also immutable distributions work differently than normal ones due to their nature. The system files never get modified and everything is installed in sort of containers. That’s overly simplifying it.
Anyway, end of the day I’m still using Bazzite on my handheld Legion Go but on my desktop it doesn’t fly and instead I’m using Fedora proper.
big linux wants to keep you distrohopping.
Gamers will be fine, it's bad news for Fedora.
Just went and voted against. You should too.
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f44-change-proposal-drop-i686-support-system-wide/156324
Link to vote
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/f44-change-proposal-drop-i686-support-system-wide/156324
Doesnt the steam runtime already exist for legacy 32 bit games.
But outside of Steam Games like Touhou 6 maybe it is a problem.
But we also have flatpak nowadays aswell so that's a option
Fedora wishes to push people who have x32 programs away from them. Check.
Edit: put a x in front of 32 for the ones who don't understand what it means without the x.
If you’re gonna be pedantic at least be correct. Either x32 or at least say “32-bit”.
The pedantic ones are the ones obsessed with correcting small errors. I only did it because someone tried to be snarky. Emphasis on tried. I for the most part overlook small errors unless they are funny. Which are the best kind of small errors.
They might even have 33.