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Linux Letting Go: 32-bit Builds On the Way Out (theregister.co.uk)
An anonymous shares a report on The Register:Major Linux distributions are in agreement: it's time to stop developing new versions for 32-bit processors. Simply: it's a waste of time, both to create the 32-bit port, and to keep 32-bit hardware around to test it on. At the end of June, Ubuntu developer Dimitri Ledkov chipped into the debate with this mailing list post, saying bluntly that 32-bit ports are a waste of resources. "Building i386 images is not 'for free', it comes at the cost of utilising our build farm, QA and validation time. Whilst we have scalable build-farms, i386 still requires all packages, autopackage tests, and ISOs to be revalidated across our infrastructure." His proposal is that Ubuntu version 18.10 would be 64-bit-only, and if users desperately need to run 32-bit legacy applications, the'll have to do so in containers or virtual machines. [...] In a forum thread, the OpenSUSE Chairman account says 32-bit support "doubles our testing burden (actually, more so, do you know how hard it is to find 32-bit hardware these days?). It also doubles our build load on OBS".
We at least need enough 32-bit packages available in the 64-bit distro (whether by dpkg --add-architecture i386, or by installing "lib32" packages like we used to do) to install and run Wine.
You see, to run Win32 programs, your Wine emulator binary needs to be a 32-bit Linux/ELF application. I suppose it could emulate cross-architecture, but wine prides itself on *not* emulating native code generation (for performance). Otherwise it would be as slow as a software virtualization solution like Bochs or (non-KVM) qemu.
Wine, in turn, depends on a number of system libraries for core services. It then implements common Windows APIs "in terms of" available platform libraries. Direct3D in terms of OpenGL; DirectSound in terms of libasound2 or libpulse; etc. These libraries, linked into a 32-bit binary, must also be 32-bit.
I agree that there's no point in testing 32-bit *hardware* any longer, but I hope they continue to ship 32-bit *builds* (even if they stop making 32-bit installation CDs). There's just too much software on the Win32 platform that needs to run on Linux (desktop OR server; see game servers) to abandon this segment of the market.