4 ms·

The first consumer 64 bit processors came out a decade and a half ago. Why is legacy 32 bit still a thing? It's not like anyone can say they haven't had ample

The first consumer 64 bit processors came out a decade and a half ago. Why is legacy 32 bit still a thing? It's not like anyone can say they haven't had ample warning time that 32 bit deprecation was coming.

kabwj 7y ago
You can’t recompile executables you don’t have the source for.
- lozenge 7y ago
  This is Steam itself, not a game. If they don't have the source, they'll have to drop Mac support too.
  - the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
    The mac market is bigger and some companies are porting 32bit games to 64bit.
    - Zardoz84 7y ago
      nobody would port old games that don't give revenues. For example, if Paradox/Cerberos don't move a finger to fix a stupid annoying bug of a game that have like 6 years old (Sword of the stars), why hell they would port to 64 bits ?
  - tomxor 7y ago
    Surely this is steam by proxy, how can they claim to support a platform if none of the 32 bit games work? I mean they could also probably port steam to NetBSD, but i doubt any games would work, so they wouldn't claim to support NetBSD.
  - lostgame 7y ago
    It's obviously more about the games themselves than the client, which are much more difficult to update in many cases and offering only 64-bit games would, AFAICT, vastly reduce the number of available titles in the library.
    - dragonwriter 7y ago
      They already distinguish platforms, if they just recognize 32-bit and 64-bit as platform features and recognize that games might require support for either or both features, this would be almost a non-issue and they would be more future proof.
  - Illniyar 7y ago
    Steam has a lot of 32bit only games. And it relies on WINE to run them. I doubt they have 64bit version of all their popular games. That is why windows is king for so long - the thought of dropping backward compatibility is unthinkable. Instead you do horrendous hacks to get things to work (such as having two different system folders - 1 for 32 bit executables and one for 64bit executables)
    - bpfrh 7y ago
      Microsoft made a hardcut with drivers on windows 7/8. The same will be done eventually for 32bit, just not now.
      - jplayer01 7y ago
        Yeah, they're not going to drop 32-bit for the foreseeable future. They see the value in backwards compatibility, despite HN readers continuously criticizing them for the lengths they go to accomplish it, or straight up ignoring how much effort they've put into it. There's too much software that is only 32-bit, particularly in businesses, for it to be anything other than an ideological argument for "purity".
        thebitrot 7y ago
        doesn't microsoft also need to keep 32 bit windows so companies can run 16-bit software if they need to?
      - badsectoracula 7y ago
        Considering new software is released as 32bit only as recently as today, this "eventually" will only come if PCs stop using CPUs from the Intel 8086 lineage.
  - kabwj 7y ago
    I was replying to the comment outside of the context of this article.
  - Cyph0n 7y ago
    But the point of Steam is to play games, and Valve does not have the source for those games.
- Avamander 7y ago
  You can repackage them though.
Illniyar 7y ago
Steam for linux is heavily dependent on WINE. WINE has been reluctant to move to 64 bit because, as I understand it, it will mean that 32 bit executable(which are the majority of games they support, I think) won't be able to run with it[0]. At least that's how I understand it. It's more about the issues with backward compatibility then inability to create a 64bit version. [0]- https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2019-June/147869.html https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2019-June/147869...
- donio 7y ago
  Wine has had 64 support for ages. A typical wine installation is multi-arch, supporting both 64 and 32 bit windows programs which is very important because running older 32 bit only programs is a huge use case for wine. The post you linked seems to be about the difficulty of packaging the 32 bit support for 64 bit only ubuntu.
cyborgx7 7y ago
Video games are more media than they are software. Sadly their format is software but their release is media. Old games aren't actively supported and won't be updated. You need to ensure some kind of compatibility with 32 bit software or drop a huge amount of support for games. And if you don't, the video game industry will probably drop you. I think you will probably need some kind of compatibility wrapper you can wrap 32 bit binaries in that will make it compatible with 64 bit systems.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  Makes sense. I guess this isn't close to anything like what I use Linux for, nor is it a core requirement of a modern Linux desktop. I'd be surprised if I'm running any executables on Linux that were compiled more than, say, a year ago. The Ubuntu release cycle is every six months, with a lot of software updated more frequently than that. And yeah, maybe the compatibility layer should be provided by Steam itself, rather than the OS. Could even just be a container or a thin VM. I don't see why it should be the OS's responsibility to continue supporting 32 bit executables indefinitely. Certainly that's not something I would want Ubuntu spending a lot of effort on, as it doesn't benefit your basic Linux desktop, server, or development use cases.
- needle0 7y ago
  This. Games are done when they're done; much like finished novels, films, or music, once the developer considers it done, it won't get updated anymore. Also likewise to film or music, if it ends up becoming a classic, it might get remastered or remade a decade or two later, but those are the exceptions rather than the norm. The vast majority of games will just stay like when they were originally made, much like the majority of novels, music, and film.
lostgame 7y ago
In media production, particularly film and audio, I am extremely dependent on, and enjoy far more more often than not - legacy plugins that may not even be manufactured any longer, or older versions I simply prefer. This is certainly not limited to the scope of media production. Heck, I even still keep a PPC iMac G4 with Tiger so I can play older Mac OS 9 games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and Riven. The point is, many people prefer or are locked to older software that simply won't be updated for various reasons. When MacOS drops 32-bit support completely, I won't be upgrading. The warnings in Mojave are already bad enough.
- sansnomme 7y ago
  How are you able to even deal with modern encodings and resolution for film on a legacy machine?
  - lostgame 7y ago
    My late 2013 MacBook Pro doesn't have issues with Final Cut Pro 7 in Sierra, which I vastly prefer for a lot of projects. It can handle 1080 just fine, I'm not interested in 4K for my purposes at the moment. For me it's more older VST's - I also keep a copy of Logic Pro 9 around for that exact reason. I certainly don't edit film on my G4! little laugh
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
antisemiotic 7y ago
There are some reasons to keep software as 32bit, like these: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2009/06/10/visual-studio-why-is-there-no-64-bit-version-yet/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2009/06/10/visual-stu... (tl;dr - bigger pointers mean higher memory consumption, they don't want to break third-party plugins, and they're porting to managed anyway). Also, either I'm misunderstanding something, or Ubuntu is throwing the baby out with the washwater here. For example, Arch was always aggressive about not supporting anything but the typical desktop at the time of release, but the 32bit packages are still in a separate repo if anyone needs them.
- mruts 7y ago
  Also aren’t 64 bit apps slower?
  - mixmastamyk 7y ago
    Believe they are faster on amd/intel because of increased registers and new instructions.
overgard 7y ago
It wasn't really until windows xp died that you could reasonably expect to drop 32 bit support, and windows xp lasted forever. Mix that in with 64bit not providing much benefit if you weren't addressing more than 2GB of ram and it took quite a while for 64bit adoption to become the norm even though hardware support was present.
- mrighele 7y ago
  The first 64 bit release of Firefox for Windows [1] was Firefox 43.0 which was released at the end of 2015 [2] [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3015388/mozilla-finally-ships-64-bit-firefox-for-windows.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3015388/mozilla-finall... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/43.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/43.0/releasenotes/
badsectoracula 7y ago
There aren't many reasons to use 64bit if your program doesn't use much memory so if you stick with 32bit your program will use less memory (64bit pointers are mostly a waste of space) and run in more systems (those that for one reason or another cannot run 64bit code - note that this isn't just the CPU not being 64bit capable, firmware could also prevent 64bit support and some low end machines with 2GB of RAM could also come with 32bit Windows preinstalled which save both disk space - no 64bit libraries - and RAM).
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  End of support for 32 bit seems like a pretty damn good reason not to use it, I must say. It's better and simpler overall if everything is on the same page and you don't have to worry about compatibility issues; this gives more benefit than whatever marginal benefit exists for allowing small programs to run more memory efficiently.
  - badsectoracula 7y ago
    My comment was about 32 bit code in general, not just about Ubuntu. There is no end of 32 bit support, neither on Windows nor on Linux (the kernel itself can run even on a 486 IIRC) and AFAIK even macOS can still run 32 bit code. Of course individual distributions like Ubuntu can drop 32 bit support (and personally i do not see it as much of an issue since you can switch distributions and Valve can simply recommend one that doesn't arbitrarily break their users' programs), but that is just the distribution doing it. The kernel can still run 32bit code and with enough effort even 19.10 will be able to run 32bit programs, the whole hubbub is about avoiding that effort.
michaelmrose 7y ago
Nobody cares if 32 bit is outdated. People still care about running windows games on linux which are still mostly 32 bit including things released yesterday not 15 years ago.

kabwj 7y ago

You can’t recompile executables you don’t have the source for.

lozenge 7y ago
This is Steam itself, not a game. If they don't have the source, they'll have to drop Mac support too.
- the_mitsuhiko 7y ago
  The mac market is bigger and some companies are porting 32bit games to 64bit.
  - Zardoz84 7y ago
    nobody would port old games that don't give revenues. For example, if Paradox/Cerberos don't move a finger to fix a stupid annoying bug of a game that have like 6 years old (Sword of the stars), why hell they would port to 64 bits ?
- tomxor 7y ago
  Surely this is steam by proxy, how can they claim to support a platform if none of the 32 bit games work? I mean they could also probably port steam to NetBSD, but i doubt any games would work, so they wouldn't claim to support NetBSD.
- lostgame 7y ago
  It's obviously more about the games themselves than the client, which are much more difficult to update in many cases and offering only 64-bit games would, AFAICT, vastly reduce the number of available titles in the library.
  - dragonwriter 7y ago
    They already distinguish platforms, if they just recognize 32-bit and 64-bit as platform features and recognize that games might require support for either or both features, this would be almost a non-issue and they would be more future proof.
- Illniyar 7y ago
  Steam has a lot of 32bit only games. And it relies on WINE to run them. I doubt they have 64bit version of all their popular games. That is why windows is king for so long - the thought of dropping backward compatibility is unthinkable. Instead you do horrendous hacks to get things to work (such as having two different system folders - 1 for 32 bit executables and one for 64bit executables)
  - bpfrh 7y ago
    Microsoft made a hardcut with drivers on windows 7/8. The same will be done eventually for 32bit, just not now.
    - jplayer01 7y ago
      Yeah, they're not going to drop 32-bit for the foreseeable future. They see the value in backwards compatibility, despite HN readers continuously criticizing them for the lengths they go to accomplish it, or straight up ignoring how much effort they've put into it. There's too much software that is only 32-bit, particularly in businesses, for it to be anything other than an ideological argument for "purity".
      - thebitrot 7y ago
        doesn't microsoft also need to keep 32 bit windows so companies can run 16-bit software if they need to?
    - badsectoracula 7y ago
      Considering new software is released as 32bit only as recently as today, this "eventually" will only come if PCs stop using CPUs from the Intel 8086 lineage.
- kabwj 7y ago
  I was replying to the comment outside of the context of this article.
- Cyph0n 7y ago
  But the point of Steam is to play games, and Valve does not have the source for those games.
Avamander 7y ago
You can repackage them though.

Illniyar 7y ago

Steam for linux is heavily dependent on WINE. WINE has been reluctant to move to 64 bit because, as I understand it, it will mean that 32 bit executable(which are the majority of games they support, I think) won't be able to run with it[0]. At least that's how I understand it. It's more about the issues with backward compatibility then inability to create a 64bit version. [0]- https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2019-June/147869.html https://www.winehq.org/pipermail/wine-devel/2019-June/147869...

donio 7y ago
Wine has had 64 support for ages. A typical wine installation is multi-arch, supporting both 64 and 32 bit windows programs which is very important because running older 32 bit only programs is a huge use case for wine. The post you linked seems to be about the difficulty of packaging the 32 bit support for 64 bit only ubuntu.

cyborgx7 7y ago

Video games are more media than they are software. Sadly their format is software but their release is media. Old games aren't actively supported and won't be updated. You need to ensure some kind of compatibility with 32 bit software or drop a huge amount of support for games. And if you don't, the video game industry will probably drop you. I think you will probably need some kind of compatibility wrapper you can wrap 32 bit binaries in that will make it compatible with 64 bit systems.

CydeWeys 7y ago
Makes sense. I guess this isn't close to anything like what I use Linux for, nor is it a core requirement of a modern Linux desktop. I'd be surprised if I'm running any executables on Linux that were compiled more than, say, a year ago. The Ubuntu release cycle is every six months, with a lot of software updated more frequently than that. And yeah, maybe the compatibility layer should be provided by Steam itself, rather than the OS. Could even just be a container or a thin VM. I don't see why it should be the OS's responsibility to continue supporting 32 bit executables indefinitely. Certainly that's not something I would want Ubuntu spending a lot of effort on, as it doesn't benefit your basic Linux desktop, server, or development use cases.
needle0 7y ago
This. Games are done when they're done; much like finished novels, films, or music, once the developer considers it done, it won't get updated anymore. Also likewise to film or music, if it ends up becoming a classic, it might get remastered or remade a decade or two later, but those are the exceptions rather than the norm. The vast majority of games will just stay like when they were originally made, much like the majority of novels, music, and film.

lostgame 7y ago

In media production, particularly film and audio, I am extremely dependent on, and enjoy far more more often than not - legacy plugins that may not even be manufactured any longer, or older versions I simply prefer. This is certainly not limited to the scope of media production. Heck, I even still keep a PPC iMac G4 with Tiger so I can play older Mac OS 9 games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 and Riven. The point is, many people prefer or are locked to older software that simply won't be updated for various reasons. When MacOS drops 32-bit support completely, I won't be upgrading. The warnings in Mojave are already bad enough.

sansnomme 7y ago
How are you able to even deal with modern encodings and resolution for film on a legacy machine?
- lostgame 7y ago
  My late 2013 MacBook Pro doesn't have issues with Final Cut Pro 7 in Sierra, which I vastly prefer for a lot of projects. It can handle 1080 just fine, I'm not interested in 4K for my purposes at the moment. For me it's more older VST's - I also keep a copy of Logic Pro 9 around for that exact reason. I certainly don't edit film on my G4! little laugh
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

antisemiotic 7y ago

There are some reasons to keep software as 32bit, like these: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2009/06/10/visual-studio-why-is-there-no-64-bit-version-yet/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ricom/2009/06/10/visual-stu... (tl;dr - bigger pointers mean higher memory consumption, they don't want to break third-party plugins, and they're porting to managed anyway). Also, either I'm misunderstanding something, or Ubuntu is throwing the baby out with the washwater here. For example, Arch was always aggressive about not supporting anything but the typical desktop at the time of release, but the 32bit packages are still in a separate repo if anyone needs them.

mruts 7y ago
Also aren’t 64 bit apps slower?
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Believe they are faster on amd/intel because of increased registers and new instructions.

overgard 7y ago

It wasn't really until windows xp died that you could reasonably expect to drop 32 bit support, and windows xp lasted forever. Mix that in with 64bit not providing much benefit if you weren't addressing more than 2GB of ram and it took quite a while for 64bit adoption to become the norm even though hardware support was present.

mrighele 7y ago
The first 64 bit release of Firefox for Windows [1] was Firefox 43.0 which was released at the end of 2015 [2] [1] https://www.computerworld.com/article/3015388/mozilla-finally-ships-64-bit-firefox-for-windows.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/3015388/mozilla-finall... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/43.0/releasenotes/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/43.0/releasenotes/

badsectoracula 7y ago

There aren't many reasons to use 64bit if your program doesn't use much memory so if you stick with 32bit your program will use less memory (64bit pointers are mostly a waste of space) and run in more systems (those that for one reason or another cannot run 64bit code - note that this isn't just the CPU not being 64bit capable, firmware could also prevent 64bit support and some low end machines with 2GB of RAM could also come with 32bit Windows preinstalled which save both disk space - no 64bit libraries - and RAM).

CydeWeys 7y ago
End of support for 32 bit seems like a pretty damn good reason not to use it, I must say. It's better and simpler overall if everything is on the same page and you don't have to worry about compatibility issues; this gives more benefit than whatever marginal benefit exists for allowing small programs to run more memory efficiently.
- badsectoracula 7y ago
  My comment was about 32 bit code in general, not just about Ubuntu. There is no end of 32 bit support, neither on Windows nor on Linux (the kernel itself can run even on a 486 IIRC) and AFAIK even macOS can still run 32 bit code. Of course individual distributions like Ubuntu can drop 32 bit support (and personally i do not see it as much of an issue since you can switch distributions and Valve can simply recommend one that doesn't arbitrarily break their users' programs), but that is just the distribution doing it. The kernel can still run 32bit code and with enough effort even 19.10 will be able to run 32bit programs, the whole hubbub is about avoiding that effort.

michaelmrose 7y ago

Nobody cares if 32 bit is outdated. People still care about running windows games on linux which are still mostly 32 bit including things released yesterday not 15 years ago.