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?
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.
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?
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
