End of support for i386 in Ubuntu will lead to problems with the distribution of Wine

Wine project developers warned about problems with the delivery of Wine for Ubuntu 19.10, in the event termination This release supports 32-bit x86 systems.

Ubuntu developers decide to stop supporting 32-bit x86 architecture counted to ship the 64-bit version of Wine or to use the 32-bit version in a container based on Ubuntu 18.04. The problem is that the 64-bit version of Wine (Wine64) is not officially supported and contains a large number uncorrected errors.
Current builds of Wine for 64-bit distributions are based on Wine32 and require 32-bit libraries.

Typically, in 64-bit environments, the necessary 32-bit libraries are supplied in multiarch packages, but Ubuntu has decided to stop creating such libraries completely. Wine developers immediately rejected the idea of ​​a snap package and running in a container, since this is only a temporary solution. It is noted that the 64-bit version of Wine will have to be brought into proper form, but this will take time.

In addition, many current Windows applications continue to ship only in 32-bit builds, and 64-bit applications often come with 32-bit installers (to handle installation attempts in Win32), so the 32-bit version of Wine continues to be developed as the main one. For a long time, Wine64 was positioned only as a tool for launching Win64 applications, not intended for running 32-bit programs, and this feature is reflected in many articles and documentation (now Wine64 is already knows how run Win32 applications, but requires 32-bit libraries).

With similar problems faced and Valve, many of whose catalog games continue to be 32-bit. Valve intends to support the 32-bit runtime for the Steam Linux client on its own. The Wine developers are not ruling out the possibility of using this runtime to ship 32-bit Wine in Ubuntu 19.10 before the 64-bit version of Wine is ready, so as not to reinvent the wheel and join forces with Valve in the field of supporting 32-bit libraries for Ubuntu.

Source: opennet.ru

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