Steam says farewell to 32-bit systems. If you are still using a 32-bit operating system, it’s time to move on. It’s hard to imagine that gamers still use 32-bit systems in 2025, unless they are running Linux or have not upgraded their graphics hardware since 2019. NVIDIA officially ended support for 32-bit drivers in 2018, […]
I now feel sorry for that Fedora dev/maintainer that got thrown over the coals earlier this year for suggesting Fedora drop 32bit now that everyone seems to be, indeed, dropping 32bit.
This is a completely different thing, Steam is dropping support for 32bit operating systems. Fedora hasn’t had a 32bit release since version 31. What that proposal was about was dropping 32bit packages, which would break old 32bit games (and Steam itself, as it relies on a lot of 32bit libraries as well).
The first x86-64 processor came out in 2003. Technology sure does move fast.
Edit: checked my old Newegg orders. I bought my first x86-64 processor, an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, in Jan 2005. I seem to remember games were starting to pick up 64-bit support around then (I think Eve Online in particular, which I played a lot back then), so it made sense to switch.
And when 64-bit support first came to Windows, Microsoft artificially limited the amount of RAM you could use unless you shelled out for the much more expensive editions. On Vista you were arbitrarily limited to 8 gigs with the basic edition, 16 with premium, and even the business editions had a limit of 128 gigs, a tiny fraction of the addressable space under a 64 bit architecture.
Even now there’s a limit, though it’s insanely high (over a terabyte) and you’re unlikely to ever see it unless you’re running a server on Windows instead of Windows Server (still limited, but in the dozens of terabytes) or Linux (which has a “limit” in the petabytes).
Eh, not that big of a deal. The exact same order where I got the 3200+ also had a stick of DDR 400 at all of 256MB. I don’t think dual-channel memory was even a thing yet, or I’m sure I would have gone that route. That 8GB limit was a long time off.
I tried to search as wall and came up empty - sorry! My best guess for this brainfart is that Valve dropped support for 32-bit on Mac relatively recently and that was after Mac client has been 64-bit for quite some time.
Not worried about storage but it adds a mess of packages and if I remember right in some cases you need to add i386 repositories into the sources list. As for the game libraries, they’re generally kept contained when downloading from Steam. Besides, any old Windows games will have the runtimes handled by Proton and new Linux native games are new enough to be 64 bit.
If you install the flatpak, you won’t need to deal with those dependencies.
Adding a repository really isn’t asking for that much. It took like 30s back when I used Arch, and it works OOTB on my current distro family, openSUSE. On Windows, the installer handles it.
It really isn’t something that anyone should care about.
The flatpak version can have issues integrating with the system, while the native install generally has fewer issues. These issues can crop both in the steam client and in the games themselves (since those processes are also sandboxed).
I personally can’t use the flatpak version on my desktop (Fedora 42) because I can’t get hardware acceleration working on the flatpak client and it’s unusably slow. Other issues I’ve heard about with the games themselves running poorly also makes me disinclined to even try to fix it.
That being said, Fedora has a nicely packaged native install for the steam client, maybe if I had to manage the dependencies more I would feel differently.
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Isn’t steam a full 32 bit program ?
In that case, your OS (Windows) can run 32-bit apps. The Steam application itself won’t have a 32-bit version at some point soon.
I mean, isn’t the steam client 32 bit ? I always have to enable 32 bit repos to install it
If it is then I’m surprised. I’ll have to look more into this.
I now feel sorry for that Fedora dev/maintainer that got thrown over the coals earlier this year for suggesting Fedora drop 32bit now that everyone seems to be, indeed, dropping 32bit.
This is a completely different thing, Steam is dropping support for 32bit operating systems. Fedora hasn’t had a 32bit release since version 31. What that proposal was about was dropping 32bit packages, which would break old 32bit games (and Steam itself, as it relies on a lot of 32bit libraries as well).
Will this make steam x86_64 (instead of x86)???
That’ll probably follow soon after, but I don’t really see the benefit, it’s not like Steam needs the extra memory or registers…
The first x86-64 processor came out in 2003. Technology sure does move fast.
Edit: checked my old Newegg orders. I bought my first x86-64 processor, an AMD Athlon 64 3200+, in Jan 2005. I seem to remember games were starting to pick up 64-bit support around then (I think Eve Online in particular, which I played a lot back then), so it made sense to switch.
I remember being so excited for 64bit Far Cry. Had no idea what it meant. But I was excited!
And when 64-bit support first came to Windows, Microsoft artificially limited the amount of RAM you could use unless you shelled out for the much more expensive editions. On Vista you were arbitrarily limited to 8 gigs with the basic edition, 16 with premium, and even the business editions had a limit of 128 gigs, a tiny fraction of the addressable space under a 64 bit architecture.
Even now there’s a limit, though it’s insanely high (over a terabyte) and you’re unlikely to ever see it unless you’re running a server on Windows instead of Windows Server (still limited, but in the dozens of terabytes) or Linux (which has a “limit” in the petabytes).
Eh, not that big of a deal. The exact same order where I got the 3200+ also had a stick of DDR 400 at all of 256MB. I don’t think dual-channel memory was even a thing yet, or I’m sure I would have gone that route. That 8GB limit was a long time off.
You what ?
The Pentium came out in 1994.
Except thr client.
Coolio, can we get the steam client to 64 bit as well?
We’ve spent most of our lives living in the 32bit paradise
IIRC this has been announced as well couple of months ago.
Do you have a link to the announcement? I can’t find it online :(
I tried to search as wall and came up empty - sorry! My best guess for this brainfart is that Valve dropped support for 32-bit on Mac relatively recently and that was after Mac client has been 64-bit for quite some time.
Why do you want a 64-bit client?
You need to download a bunch of i386 dependencies on Linux.
Are you worried about storage?
You’d also still need most of those if the launcher was 64-bit if you install an older game.
Not worried about storage but it adds a mess of packages and if I remember right in some cases you need to add i386 repositories into the sources list. As for the game libraries, they’re generally kept contained when downloading from Steam. Besides, any old Windows games will have the runtimes handled by Proton and new Linux native games are new enough to be 64 bit.
If you install the flatpak, you won’t need to deal with those dependencies.
Adding a repository really isn’t asking for that much. It took like 30s back when I used Arch, and it works OOTB on my current distro family, openSUSE. On Windows, the installer handles it.
It really isn’t something that anyone should care about.
I’m not a fan of flatpaks. I try to avoid them when I can.
Ok, then go through the minor inconvenience of installing 32-bit libs.
The flatpak version can have issues integrating with the system, while the native install generally has fewer issues. These issues can crop both in the steam client and in the games themselves (since those processes are also sandboxed).
I personally can’t use the flatpak version on my desktop (Fedora 42) because I can’t get hardware acceleration working on the flatpak client and it’s unusably slow. Other issues I’ve heard about with the games themselves running poorly also makes me disinclined to even try to fix it.
That being said, Fedora has a nicely packaged native install for the steam client, maybe if I had to manage the dependencies more I would feel differently.
It’s frankly amazing that they supported it for so long!