Linux

47231 readers

773 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
No misinformation
No NSFW content
No hate speech, bigotry, etc

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

108

Why the Steam deb from Canonical has been broken since 23.04 (popey.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

tl;dr In a recent thread on Mastodon, it was revealed that Ubuntu 23.04 users can’t install the Steam deb package from the Ubuntu archive without jumping through some technical hoops. It turns out this was a mistake, a bug was filed, and future builds shouldn’t have this problem.

Steam - the game store/launcher from Valve requires a bunch of 32-bit libraries to function. Many of the games that Steam installs also require many of these various libraries. These older games are likely never going to get updated to have 64-bit clean builds.

The thread on Mastodon brought up an expected thought process, though. The conspiracy theory-minded might (reasonably) think “This is Canonical breaking the deb, so you’re forced to use the snap”. But that doesn’t appear to be the case.

It’s just a simple mistake that is fixed, and now (a selected set of) i386 packages will be easily accessible again.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I guess one question is: why is it still 32-bit? Feels like something Valve should be updating now.

I'd wonder if it is too maintain compatibility with 32-bit titles?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

TL;DR is that wine doesn't yet support WoW64 (Windows on Windows64), which enables the running of 32-bit binaries on a 64-bit system - it's conceptually similar to multilib on Linux. You can't run 32-bit Windows bins on a purely 64-bit WINE as I understand it.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

But the Steam launcher doesn't run on Wine. Some games may run on Proton but one shouldn't depend on the other AFAIK?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

well, Wine does support WoW64, but the way it's implemented requires you to install both 32 and 64 bit Wine.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

yes, many games have 32-bit builds (though maybe Valve can just use 32-bit Steam Runtime to preserve compatibility)