Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

Well, the best solution would be to fix Wine for 64 bit platforms and applications. And use docker + wine for 32 bits ones.

I do use Wine (and Steam with it's various levels of Windows API calling), and I am happy about this.

Sure, it will create some issues during the first stages of this migration, but, more than once, I botched my system in the past with the needed i386 libraries (it didn't happen lately, can't tell if because I finally got my head around it of because they improved the tooling).

Still, in the end, we will all have a "cleaner" system. Either because they migrate parts of the Windows calling to 64bit or because they will keep everything neatly in containers, or, probably, due to a mix of both. But it's high time we improve the current state of these tools.

P.S.: Still trying to get WINASIO to work properly with Wine using one of the latest versions (I am trying to run Ableton in Wine, but the latency is just too high). If anyone has experience doing this, any tips would be apreciated.

I use Ubuntu, but should I switch to Debian or something else? What do I get with Ubuntu that I don't get with Debian? The ability to run Windows binaries is important to me.

I immediately wondered about macOS, which is dropping 32-bit support as well. One of the first links I found[1] seems to say that there is no 64-bit wine on macOS regardless of library issues, due to an ABI incompatibility. So on the surface it seems like the world is shifting under wine's feet, and they are going to need to do a second level of emulation eventually to keep 32-bit stuff running.

[1]: https://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=23005

WINE needs 32 bit support. The bulk of windows programs that people still care about are from the 32 bit era, and as they point out many 64 bit apps use 32 bit installers. Maybe it's time for x86 box like DOSbox.