Bazzite Would Shut Down If Fedora Goes Ahead With Removing 32-Bit (gamingonlinux.com) 54
If Fedora drops 32-bit support, the gaming-focused Bazzite project would be forced to shut down, according to its founder Kyle Gospodnetich. "As much as I'd like this change to happen, it's too soon," said Gospodneitch in a post. "This change would kill off projects like Bazzite entirely right as Fedora is starting to make major headway in the gaming space. Neal Gompa already pointed out basic use cases that would be broken even if someone built the packages Steam itself needs to function."
He continued: "It's also causing irreparable damage to Fedora from a PR standpoint. I have been inundated all day with people sharing news articles and being genuinely concerned Steam is gong to stop working on their Fedora/Bazzite machines. I would argue not only should this change be rejected, the proposal should be rescinded to limit further damage to Fedora as a project. Perhaps open a separate one to talk about changing build architecture to build fewer 32-bit packages?"
When pushed further, Gospodnetich said: "I'm speaking as it's founder, if this change is actually made as it is written the best option for us is to just go ahead and disband the project."
He continued: "It's also causing irreparable damage to Fedora from a PR standpoint. I have been inundated all day with people sharing news articles and being genuinely concerned Steam is gong to stop working on their Fedora/Bazzite machines. I would argue not only should this change be rejected, the proposal should be rescinded to limit further damage to Fedora as a project. Perhaps open a separate one to talk about changing build architecture to build fewer 32-bit packages?"
When pushed further, Gospodnetich said: "I'm speaking as it's founder, if this change is actually made as it is written the best option for us is to just go ahead and disband the project."
Re: Why is 32bit needed? (Score:2)
Steam.
Re:Why is 32bit needed? (Score:5, Informative)
Nobody makes or sells 32-bit systems anymore, but despite this many people make and sell 32-bit games, or (even worse) games that require a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit libraries. Because of this, Wine and Proton have to also do the same thing, and the basic development culture of doing this even infected the Linux Steam client itself, which requires a mix of at least some of both types of libraries as a bridge to graphics drivers and certain system libraries. Even current 64-bit copies of Windows still keep and maintain a set of 32-bit libraries and general compatibility because Windows developers seemingly can't be arsed to figure out the difference. Gentoo made this change a couple years ago and it pretty much ended their consideration as a gaming distro overnight, and as far as I understand it, the Gentoo leadership did this specifically to isolate themselves from the gaming crowd and their contingent support requests. It would be pretty dumb for Fedora to do the same unless they were expecting the same results, but I can't speak for their leadership's intentions or awareness in this matter.
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I'm not a gamer, but Gentoo has Multilib support of x32_abi concurrently to 64 bits. Wine-proton is officially supported, and there is a gaming section in the forum. What does not work?
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Thanks, and sorry for the misinformation, I've gotten these two incidents munged together in my head: Funtoo reportedly ended multilib support, while Gentoo merely deprecated a particular multilib implementation they were using but have since reportedly replaced it. (Twice?)
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That's precisely what would break.
This isn't about shipping a 64bit distro, this is about removing that compatibility layer for 32bit applications.
You might have a hard time finding a 32 bit computer these days, but tons of programs are still compiled under 32 bit so they can run on both 64 bit and 32 bit systems, especially when dealing with windows programs, where you might want to run say, your old video games from back in the day.
It's currently depreciated in Rhel 10, so not recommended, but still there
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Isn't x32 a different system from ix86? I was under the impression x32 was basically "Use the amd64 ISA, but with 32 bit addresses to save memory and memory bandwidth." (Needless to say this ABI isn't compatible with Steam, Win32 binaries, or anything else that needs ix86 instructions)
That seems to be confirmed by this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] But it could be Gentoo is using it to refer to ix86-32?
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I mangled the names. Gentoo supports 3 concurrent options: abi_x86_64, abi_x86_x32 and abi_x86_32. The middle one is the one you describe ("mostly aims to mix the advantages of amd64 ABI with 32-bit pointers"), and the latter is "the 32-bit x86 ABI that is compatible with applications and libraries written for plain x86 CPUs." https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/M... [gentoo.org]
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Ah OK, thanks! Thought it odd, and Gentoo seems like the one OS that would have full support for x32 (and potentially could be less bothered by ix86 support) so I thought I'd ask!
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I'm not sure it was really fair to mod this down... it was a relevant question.
Why not just move to a different distro.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't know a lot about this project but I am not understanding why they wouldn't just move to a non-Fedora based distribution. There are *LOTS* of them.
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The whole point is that Bazzite is the Red Hat-based gaming distro. If Bazzite used another distro, it would really be something else entirely and likely be somewhat duplicated effort.
What I don't get is why they can't do their own packaging of 32 bit libraries? I assume that what Bazzite devs do is mainly packaging, so why not also package this thing that your distro needs to work?
"The whole point is that Bazzite is the Red Hat... (Score:2)
If that is the whole point, they could mention that on their https://bazzite.gg/ [bazzite.gg] page? I can't seem to find it....
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I guess they don't say it like I did, but there are about 8 references to Fedora on their site, they're clearly based on Fedora.
Re:Why not just move to a different distro.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no technical reason to lock their platform to Fedora. If they are that tightly coupled to Fedora, they should rethink their design. Linux is the platform, software should target Linux, not just one distro.
Re:Why not just move to a different distro.... (Score:4, Informative)
They are not some program running on Linux. They are an entire self contained distro. Yes in the Linux world many distros are very tightly coupled to their upstream parent projects. If Ubuntu disappeared tomorrow you wouldn't lose one distro; about 20 others would close up. This is precisely why everyone lost their shit when Debian adopted SystemD - the downstream effects of this were huge.
It's not trivial to simply migrate your distro to a different parent project. It's a monumental task, and having your entire project break in this way would be hugely demotivating.
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While your points are correct, they also reinforce my point. If you are building something for Linux, don't hitch your wagon to a single distro. Fedora and Debian aren't so special that downstream projects must be tightly coupled to them.
The software development community is learning the importance of decoupling. Dependency injection, interfaces, microservices, containers, while overused in some contexts, are still examples of an important principle. Tightly-coupled systems are more fragile than loosely cou
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Then maybe they need to shut down the project and start a new one. Debian will probably still support 32 Bit in 20 years.
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Building a Linux distribution requires a fair amount of infrastructure, and that's something that's pretty different from distro to distro (and not all make all the necessary tooling public). Changing to a different base distro would most likely require a significant rework, and may be more than someone, especially someone who has mastered the intricacies of one distro's tooling, wants to do.
Yocto Distro Framework (Score:2)
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Or fork Fedora, right?
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Bazzite is part of the Universal Blue Project which are a handful of official images and also the base for custom images, they would have to duplicate the work from that project if they switch to something else.
Also, one of the main components for the system is "rpm-ostree" which is obviously rpm only but also seems to be quite Fedora centric.
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One limiting factor is that Bazzite, Aurora and Bluefin are all based on Fedora SilverBlue, which is an atomic distribution, rather than standard Fedora. This is by design.
I'm not part of the project, so I don't know if it could be quite a major to move to another underpinning atomic distribution of similar quality.
"Fedora is making headway in gaming space" (Score:2)
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This person is delusional.
The whole parent project is at the intersection of cloudy devops and Linux desktop woo woo
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He means through Bazzite itself, which is steadily growing its install base by being very SteamOS-like but with the maturity, flexibility and massive repos that Fedora brings to the table. Just jump on YouTube and search for Bazzite, it's getting hyped for being a "Windows killer" for gaming and "better SteamOS than SteamOS".
Its momentum isn't nothing and it would be a shame for it to die over an arbitrary decision from a member of the Fedora engineering team. He's not wrong, of course - at some point 32-bi
Why would a distro change kill a linux project? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is this person not aware of the 10000 other distributions? If this project is solely to play games on fedora and somehow not any other distribution then I doubt it is any great loss. And if you can't make changes so that it runs on another distro then I have a hard time believing the project does anything useful because you would have to be incredibly dense.
Perhaps it is vibe coded and they need to get on the AI's good side to get these changes done or whatever.
Re:Why would a distro change kill a linux project? (Score:5, Informative)
What the project does is customize Fedora to be friendlier for gaming. Being a Fedora customization, obviously it can't change distros.
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Is this person not aware of the 10000 other distributions?
Bazzite is not a program running on Linux. It is a distribution that uses Fedora as the upstream project. Moving to another distribution is a monumental task almost as bad as starting something from scratch.
Slackware (Score:5, Interesting)
Slackware is the stable distribution they're looking for.
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EXACTLY what I was going to say, my good sir!
Good to see a fellow Slackware user in the wild :)
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By default, a Slackware x64 install doesn't support 32 bit either. If you need to run 32 bit software, you have to install multilib support yourself.
Is weird that LinuxSteam is still 32 bit (Score:2)
After all, the steam client on Mac is 64 Bit, and porting from BSD-ish to Linux should be relatively easy, dobly so because the Steam client is based on chromium which has both 32 and 64 bit clients.
Granted, Valve took their Sweeeeet time moving the Mac Client from 32 to 64 bits, but hey, it was doable....
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MacOS dropped 32-bit a few years ago, and it did the same thing - murdered gaming dead, on macOS. It's actually easier to run Windows 32-bit binaries on macOS than it is to run 32-bit macos binaries. MOST of my macos compatible Steam library doesn't work any more. (And it'll be so much worse when the remove Rosetta 2 - and they will, bet.)
What would make sense to me, is to create some kind of hybrid virtualization/containerized thing to run old binaries (think something like WPA2.) Hybrid binaries might be
Advise to Bazzite: ReBase the distro (Score:4, Interesting)
Bazzite based on Fedora:
Take inspiration from linux mint. Mint is based of Ubuntu, but they also have a Linux Mint Debian Edition for the sole purpose of validating that, if needed be because ubuntu does something they do not agree with, they can move to debian and keep operating.
Maybe is time to do the same. Rebase the project on another distro. Not necesarily Debian, but something more tenable for your purposes.
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Ubuntu is based on Debian, so obviously is easier to change from Ubuntu to Debian than from Fedora to Debian. Also, probably is a difference in the number of contributors.
IS a perfectly sensible move from Fedora (Score:3)
Fedora's raison d'etre (sorry for the lack of accents), is to be a testing ground of the future evolution of RHEL, I believe that, by the time RHEL11 lands, the RHEL ecosystem will not need 32bit libraries or executables for that matter.
So, better not waste the scant resources RH destines to Fedora in making 32 bit happen. Instead, lobby Valve to move the steam client from 32 to 64Bits.
JM2C YMMV
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RHEL may WANT to go 64bit only, but their enterprise customers will tell them 32bit library layers stay or RH can fuck right off since they won't port their old stuff to 64.
Enterprise moves at glacial speeds. It's all about stability. They aren't going to rewrite, if they even CAN, everything to 64 bit "just because". They will just pay support to someone else and tell RH to go pound sand.
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They already did it.... RHEL 10 removes all 32bit multilib/library packages from the OS. If you need 32bit libraries, you're stuck with RHEL 9.
Not clear (Score:1)
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They are referring to multiarch support (as debian calls it). The OS itself is 64-bit, but all the infrastructure to run older 32-bit binaries (including win32 exes on Wine) is available in the repos. Fedora has always packaged 32-bit rpms even right up until Fedora 42.
Now in this case they are referring to Fedora Silverblue, not the normal rpm-based distro everyone knows about. Obviously Silverblue has some kind of 32-bit multiarch support, which Fedora is planning to eliminate.
Switch to Debian??? (Score:2)
Should have switched to Debian a decade ago. Redhat is the walking dead.
Chicken and Egg (Score:2)
Not only the Steam client but also the games (Score:2)
Assuming Fedora goes ahead with removing 32-bit multilib, how would a 64-bit Steam client run 32-bit games whose (non-Valve) publishers have not released a 64-bit executable?
Already been removed in RHEL 10 (Score:1)
All 32bit libraries/multilib functionality was completely removed in RHEL10, having been deprecated in RHEL 9.
6.11. Compilers and development tools
32-bit packages have been removed in RHEL 10
Linking against 32-bit multilib packages has been removed. The *.i686 packages remain supported for the life cycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9.
This is likely a move to align Fedora in the same direction since Fedora -> CentOS Stream -> RHEL