Ubuntu 19.10 looks DOA for gamers, with Valve dropping support for the OS

Apple, Canonical and Microsoft may have switched to distributing 64-Bit OSs a few years ago, but Mac OS X, Ubuntu and Windows all still support the 32-bit architecture. Microsoft integrates Windows 32-bit on Windows 64-bit (WoW64) for example, while the current version of Ubuntu still supports 32-bit. That is, until now.

Starting with 19.10 Ubuntu will contain only 64-bit code, with Canonical removing all 32-bit support. In short, no 32-bit applications will run on future versions of Ubuntu. This may not seem noteworthy considering that developers have had years to upgrade their software to 64-bit. However, Ubuntu 19.10 and newer will prevent even 64-bit applications from executing any 32-bit libraries or packages.

In practical terms, this means that 64-bit applications that use 32-bit installers will not even install on Ubuntu 19.10. Alan Pope, Developer Advocate at Canonical, demonstrated his lack of success at installing games from GOG, all of which required the wine32 package or required a 32-bit binary.

Correspondingly, Steam has decided to drop Ubuntu from its list of supported OSs as of 19.10, with Valve Linux developer Pierre-Loup Griffais tweeting the following: