What’s holding the Linux desktop back?
Linus Torvalds looks to Chromebooks and Android for the future of the Linux desktop, while Linux Mint developers aren’t happy with each other.
At first glance, Canonical dropping support for 32-bit Ubuntu Linux libraries looked to be interesting — the end of an era — but of no real importance. Then, Canonical announced that, beginning with October’s Ubuntu 19.10 release, 32-bit -computer support would be dropped. And both developers and users screamed their objections.
Canonical listened and has changed course. “Thanks to the huge amount of feedback this weekend from gamers, Ubuntu Studio, and the WINE community, we will change our plan and build selected 32-bit i386 packages for Ubuntu 19.10 and 20.04 LTS.”
There are few–if any–people demanding new Linux versions for their antique i386 PCs.Linux itself dropped support for the seminal 32-bit processor in 2012. At the time, Linus Torvalds bid 32-bit Linux good-bye saying, “I’m not sentimental. Good riddance.”
So, when Canonical stopped shipping 32-bit Ubuntu Linux ISOs a few ago it wasn’t a big deal. Canonical didn’t expect dropping the 32-bit libraries would cause much of a fuss either.
Canonical stated, “After the Ubuntu 18.04 LTS release we had extensive threads on the Ubuntu-devel list and also consulted Valve in detail on the topic. None of those discussions raised the passions we’ve seen here, so we felt we had sufficient consensus for the move in Ubuntu 20.04 LTS.”
Thus, the Ubuntu engineering team “concluded that we should not continue to carry i386 forward as an architecture,” explained Steve ‘Vorlon’ Langasek, a senior Ubuntu software developer. “Consequently, i386 will not be included as an architecture for the 19.10 release, and we will shortly begin the process of disabling it for the Eoan series across Ubuntu infrastructure.”
If you really needed those libraries for a particular program, Canonical suggested you download and install them with software packages, such as Snap, which include all the libraries needed for a particular program.
After all, as was stated in another Ubuntu forum, “Hardware which will only run a 32-bit operating system is getting pretty rare these days and is unlikely to have enough resources to run the latest release of Ubuntu Desktop.”
No problem, right? Wrong.
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