Almost every distro I’ve used so far ends up having problems installing Steam due to mismatching i386 packages. I’ve heard that they’re being removed upstream. Anyone happen to know a timeline?

  • lordnikon@lemmy.worldEnglish
    59·
    3 months ago

    i could be wrong but my understanding it’s still 32 bit because of game compatability with older steam games and since the app itself is only a limited web browser and library. It doesn’t need that much memory. So the compatibility wins out for as long as it can.

    • jonne@infosec.pubEnglish
      14·
      3 months ago

      Steam itself doesn’t run the games, right? Couldn’t they easily build a small 32 bit launcher for the older games that need it?

      • Consti@lemmy.worldEnglish
        13·
        3 months ago

        You can start steam just fine without the packages. In fact, if you install without them, it’ll ask you to install them every time, but you can skip that and it’ll work, just 32bit games won’t launch

        Edit: Looks like I’m partially wrong, as pointed out by a commenter below, steam currently only launches the 32-bit version of the client, despite support for a 5l64-bit client

      • steeznson@lemmy.worldEnglish
        2·
        3 months ago

        Steam runtime includes a lot of common static libraries that most games expect to be there. This means that older games will still work even though the wider OS might not have 32bit libs present.