Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

linuxuprising.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 192 posts

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#171

Post by SwellJoe »

momokoko wrote: post #7

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

I only use Wine indirectly, but I use it frequently because a ton of Steam games that run on Linux use Wine under the hood.

I just don't buy/play games that don't have a Linux version, as a VM was historically (maybe still?) too much hassle in terms of getting GPU to work, etc.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#172

Post by stOneskull »

asark wrote: post #40
yawaw0rht wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why you're being downvoted. This is a legitimate question. Although my sibling comment might offer an explanation to your downvotes. Edit: HN's really gone downhill. I thought we didn't downvote with feelings around here? All I did was point out that it's a legitimate question for people who don't have much experience with Photoshop, GIMP, etc.

They're miserable to use. Sincerely, Person who has spent ~2-3x as much time in The Gimp as in Photoshop, and first learned image editing on Paint Shop Pro, not Photoshop, but would still choose PS if you told me to edit some images and my life depended on it, especially if I also couldn't use Google to look up how to do basic freakin' things.

i haven't thought about paint shop pro for a long time. fond memories. i might try and run that in wine.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#173

Post by adrianmonk »

richard_todd wrote: post #8

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.wi…

Are they going to have to change their name to "Wine Is Now an Emulator"? At least it's only one letter difference.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#174

Post by yellowapple »

I took Ubuntu's dropping of 32-bit support to only apply to the machine itself, like how openSUSE Leap only supports running on 64-bit hardware but still supports 32-bit libraries[1]. Sounds like Ubuntu's taking it to an even greater extreme.

Regardless, I can think of a couple ways around this:

- Build the 32-bit versions of the relevant libraries and ship them in a third-party PPA (or - ideally - convince Canonical to do this for Ubuntu, thus doing what openSUSE Leap is doing)

- Ship Wine in a snap or AppImage or flatpak or what have you with the relevant 32-bit (and 64-bit) libraries

[1]: https://doc.opensuse.org/documentation/leap/reference/html/b...

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#175

Post by fnord77 »

richard_todd wrote: post #8

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.wi…

it's going to be moot on macOS when mac hardware switches to ARM.

e.g. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-arm-cpus-2020-in...

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#176

Post by AgentME »

olliej wrote: post #47

But why not just do a translation — 32bit x86 to 64bit x86 doesn’t meaningfully restrict available instructions, then just* plant a bunch trampolines in the low 4gig to the real implementations in the 64bit adds space. * I know this isn’t a trivial “just” but it seems like a plausibly achievable approach to me

32-bit binaries have a different ABI. I think you could put 32-bit code in a 64-bit process and have it use the 32-bit API, but then you still need a set of libraries that work with the 32-bit ABI. Ubuntu is just discontinuing packaging their own copies of the 32-bit ABI compatible libraries. Projects like Wine will just need to distribute that on their own.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#177

Post by rs23296008n1 »

momokoko wrote: post #7

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

I use wine so that I don't have to spin up a VM for just one application. VMs also involve a lot of overhead. It seems a little silly to boot an entire OS and have that entire infrastructure just so I can use a Notepad++ plugin I wrote 5 years ago.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#178

Post by Wowfunhappy »

Arkanosis wrote: post #44
momokoko wrote: post #7

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

I use Wine from time to time, because some vendors (especially hardware vendors) still expect you to have Windows for silly reasons (eg. to write an update file on an USB key for a car GPS — I'm looking at you, Renault — or to unlock a phone bootloader — I'm looking at you, Xiaomi). That's a life saver in such cases and I can't state how grateful I am for Wine to exist. And no, I won't run Windows in a VM as I refuse…

> some vendors (especially hardware vendors) still expect you to have Windows for silly reasons (eg. to write an update file on an USB key for a car GPS — I'm looking at you, Renault — or to unlock a phone bootloader — I'm looking at you, Xiaomi).

Does this kind of stuff work in Wine for you? I generally need to use a VM, because if it needs to talk to another device drivers are involved.

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#179

Post by madprops »

Aelius wrote: post #15
momokoko wrote: post #7

I'm curious about Wine's usage and relevance at this point in the Linux desktop story. My assumption is that Linux users(myself included) that use Windows applications(not games), tend to just run a VM in seamless mode for Windows functionality. I would be curious if others had any insight(anecdotal or otherwise) about Wine usage these days.

I used to run foobar2000 in wine, because no other linux media player scratched some of the itches foobar covered. There is even a foobar2000 package in the arch aur so it simply installs like any other pacman managed program. However, once I learned of the wine interface that is available on flathub (for flatpak) I immediately removed wine and its 32 bit components from my system- now that untidyness is neatly conta…

I'm using Clementine (qt) as a replacement, it's working very nicely :)

Re: Wine Developers Concerned with Ubuntu Dropping 32-Bit Support

#180

Post by mr_toad »

fnord77 wrote: post #175
richard_todd wrote: post #8

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.wi…

it's going to be moot on macOS when mac hardware switches to ARM. e.g. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/apple-mac-arm-cpus-2020-in...

I’d say if, rather than ‘when’. Given the report came from Bloomberg I’d put the odds at about 50:50.
Post reply on HN