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.
WINE’s WoW64, does not work for all games.
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 that 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)
Dammit - found Bazzite one week ago and love it - now its embroiled in a controversy.
Same here. Nobara was too glitchy so I switched to Bazzite and love it so far. Sigh.
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.
If it helps at all some of the comments in the linked discussion mentions it’s at minimum a year out
For those that think the response is overblown, from the thread:
These images are intended to be a drop-in replacement for Steam Deck OS for handheld console-like gaming PCs like the Steam Deck (Lenovo Legion Go, ASUS ROG Ally, MSI Claw, and other hardware in the same space).
These are also to be used to create gaming theater PCs, for streamlined use on a living room television.
The issue with “just using Flatpak or a container” is that the gamescope compositor simply does not work in those situations, when paired with Steam’s Gaming Mode, as it has the same concerns as a desktop environment. There would simply be no way to serve Gaming Mode as an environment.
As such, moving to this would essentially force Bazzite, as a project, to abandon its primary reason for existing - alienating 2/3s of their userbase. The remaining 1/3s would be served a lesser experience for a variety of more paper cut reasons, and VR is already a complex topic which would get even worse.
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 ?
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I was this 🤏 close to a reflexive downvote
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.
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.
What features are missing on flatpak version? I am playing games that way without any issues…
I’m no expert, and I’m running Bazzite (and previously Nobara), both of which have the RPM installed by default so I don’t think I’ve ever used the Steam Flatpak. But things mentioned in the thread are VR and Gamescope.
I do wonder if any issues are related to permission restrictions that could be resolved editing permissions with Flatseal, but I don’t know enough about the issues.
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
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
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.
I went to Garuda
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 distroCachyos 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.
My go-to too.
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
Isn’t Garuda also based on Fedora?
Edit: I was thinking of Nobara.
Honestly go for EnOS. Garuda is neat and has a good default setup, but they’ve gone a little far with their modifications imo
Honestly go for EnOS.
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
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.
Why not ride streams coat-tails and switch to arch?
Or Debian. It still supports MIPS64 officially and 68K unofficially. x86 isn’t going anywhere for a long time.
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.
Makes sense
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.
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
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.
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.
You one to
What. The. Fuck.
Speech to text is my guess. You one to = Ubuntu?
pre-size pan go lean
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.
God fucking damnit, I finally find a Linux OS that gels with me and I find this shit…
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.
Been with fedora for years, but fedora is the problem, so that would be pretty pointless.
Fedora is literally the source of this problem. Bazzite is based on Fedora.
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
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.
