A Slashdot post yesterday pointed to a worrying thread on the Ubuntu mailing list archive about dropping 32-bit support from Ubuntu. The Ubuntu thread is here:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2016-June/039420.html
It is not 100% clear to me what they are considering - they mention dropping 32-bit .isos and also ceasing to support users who want to run 32-bit apps (at least unless the app is packaged in a container alongside all of the necessary libraries). Their thought is to do this in a couple of years, with Ubuntu 18.10:
18.10+: * Stop providing i386 port * Run legacy i386 only application in snaps / containers / virtual machines
Disturbingly, no one on the Ubuntu thread ever mentions Wine. Oddly there is discussion about IoT applications which might need 32-bit libraries and a proposal to continue building select libs for those things, but maybe minus the graphics stack :-(. In the Slashdot post someone at least mentions Wine, but the little discussion that prompted was seemingly in error until Francois came along to correct them.
I think Wine should be aware of the issue and make some noise about it before distros grow attached to the idea of ceasing to build 32-bit libraries. I will probably post to the Ubuntu thread to at least mention Wine, unless someone here is involved in that community and thinks they can do a better job. The more distros hear from the Wine community about the value of 32-bit libraries, the better. It might be that they will conclude on their own that users need them to continue building 32-bit libraries, but I don't know that we can trust distros not to break things if we don't speak up.
On 7/6/16 10:47 AM, Josh DuBois wrote:
I will probably post to the Ubuntu thread to at least mention Wine, unless someone here is involved in that community and thinks they can do a better job.
Fwiw I did post to the Ubuntu list asking them to take Wine into consideration with respect to building 32-bit libraries. I got an encouraging response:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel/2016-July/039452.html
They emphasized that they're not even considering changes to the availability of 32-bit libraries until 18.10, which is a couple of years out. Also it sounds like they had Wine in mind to some degree already, even though it wasn't mentioned in the thread. They did mention asking users to run Wine in a Snap container, and also floated a vague idea that some kind of changes to Wine might make the issue easier for them. I don't know how either of those things would go (in terms of changes to Wine, there was no specific proposal, so neither do they).
But, at least for now, things seem positive in that they're not taking any immediate steps which would break things and they haven't forgotten about us :-)
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Josh DuBois