Bazzite founder might shutdown whole project if Fedora drops support for 32 bit packages

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.
- 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.
  
  only problem could be other packages or the kernel becoming incompatible
  Yea dependency management without updates is like 80% of the work that goes into package maintenance
- 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.
- Older games? What are you talking about? They say in that thread that Valve doesn’t release 64bit versions of Steam. That means any games through Steam using the official client would be unplayable.
  
  The flatpak should still work. Though I agree it's a problem.
  
  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.

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

- I was this 🤏 close to a reflexive downvote

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 ?

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.
  
  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
  
  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 distro
  
  Cachyos has some great default setup choices too. Limine with btrfs + snapper, all preconfigured.. spot on!
  
  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.
- 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
- 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)
  
  Oh? I'm still a Linux noob, educate me.
  
  There is a lite version, but sure whatever you prefer.

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?
- 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.
- That would require redoing everything. It would be a massive project, and honestly since there’s already other gaming oriented distros out there, what would be the point? It’s not like Garuda or PopOS is shit.
  
  popos is

Glad I didnt install bazzite.
- what did you go with?
  
  I've heard CachyOS is good but I'm not the one to ask.

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

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?
- 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

Why would they not just use an Arch base like the real SteamOS does?
- Fedora and Red Hat are innovating image-based operating systems. Universal Blue builds on that work.
  It would take effort to port that work to Arch. Arch is also a rolling distro, not updating means not getting security updates. Fedora's release cycle allows them to get more stability, they don't have to be using the latest version.
  
  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.

We shouldn't be talking about stuff like this here. It spooks the noobs.

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.
  
  If Fedora drops support for 32bit packages, Steam, Proton, and more will no longer work, and all Fedora derivatives become useless for gaming.
  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.
- 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 -R flags, 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.

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.

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
  
  I've been biased against Fedora for a long time
  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.

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?
- Well, no. If it actually happens, Bazzite can’t exist. Valve only releases 32bit of Steam for the official client. If support for 32bit is removed from Fedora, then gamers won’t be able to use Steam on Fedora or its downstream distros.
  
  And what if Valve starts releasing 64bit version?
  
  Wouldn't the Steam Flatpak still work?
  
  Just migrate to cachy! It's everything bazzite is but better!

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.
- Nobara gave me a month to start

Pop! OS with big screen mode on second display/workspace is the best of both worlds.

So was Bazzite founded by someone’s mate Baz or what?

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