Steve Langasek from Canonical about the intention to provide users of future Ubuntu releases the ability to use libraries for the 32-bit x86 architecture by borrowing those libraries from Ubuntu 18.04. It is noted that support for i386 libraries will continue but will be frozen at the state of Ubuntu 18.04.
Thus, users of Ubuntu 19.10 will be able to install the libraries necessary to run 32-bit applications and games at least until the end of support for the Ubuntu 18.04 release, updates for which will be available until April 2023 (with a paid subscription until 2028). The libraries will be installable directly from the Ubuntu 18.04 repository, where, as part of the efforts to update the graphics stack in the LTS branch, releases of Mesa from the current versions of Ubuntu will be transferred for some time, which will partially address the issue of potential incompatibility of 32-bit graphic libraries with the new system environment and drivers.
Let’s remember that representatives of Canonical initially only the possibility of running 32-bit applications in Ubuntu 19.10+ using containers with the Ubuntu 18.04 environment or snap packages in the runtime core18, and stated the end of support for the direct use of 32-bit libraries starting from Ubuntu 19.10. Subsequently, the inability to use Wine in its current form without 32-bit libraries due to the unavailability of the 64-bit version of Wine. It also became clear that some Linux printer drivers remain available only in 32-bit builds. As a result, Valve the intention to discontinue official support for Steam in Ubuntu 19.10 and later releases.
Source: opennet.ru
