Ubuntu considering to drop i386 after 19.10

Thoughts & Feedback
#21

Canonical can collaborate with teams from Debian, Linux Mint and System76 to create a unified 32-bit repository to be included on all of their systems and boom job done. The burden of maintaining the 32-bit libraries would be shifted across the entire mainstream Ubuntu derivative stack and Canonical would have less of an issue maintaining access to 32-bit libs.

I think S76 with Pop!_OS could take this as an opportunity to provide to end users a 32-bit "Ubuntu". It would fill a unique niche of the market (People from Ubuntu wanting 32-bit libraries hosted by the distributor) in a world where there isn't 32-bit Ubuntu.

#22

A possible "problem" with a unified 32-bit repository is that Ubuntu may have added their own patches to the packages. It's one of the reasons why Ubuntu and Debian packages are not always interchangeable.

It would just make sense to continue business as usual building upstream i386 equivalents to their amd64 package counterparts, but just for libraries. Which it seems they will do for 19.10 and 20.04.

In theory, one could take Pop!_OS' efforts and use it on their Ubuntu (flavour or derivative), but really should be something be tackled at the core -- or they'd be loads of PPAs, repositories and third party sources floating around.

#23

Steam announced they will continue supporting Ubuntu 19.10+ as the official distribution. It sounds like they will also take this opportunity to officially support other distributions in future. :slight_smile: