The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes: General The Steam client is now 64-bit on Windows 11 and Windows 10 64-bit. Systems running 32-bit versions of Windows will continue receiving updates to the 32-bit Steam client until January 1, 2026. Game Recording Fixed errors copying to clipboard or exporting H265 videos on systems with a NVIDIA 50xx series gpu.
Well. Way to give up on the 32-bit dream steam. Jeez. Does nobody hold the line anymore? Who cares that a 32-bit processor probably hasn’t been sold in over a decade? Stick to your guns steam. Everyone told you that it was idiotic not to update to 64-bit and you ignored them. I respected that. A sad day for a poor decision.
We had this discussion at my company. And the result was we swapped over in our next major version and told any customer who couldn’t run a 64-bit program to get an OS made in the last decade. (no customer complained)
The main point of 32-bit Windows 10 wasn’t to make it run on non-64-bit hardware, it’s that x86 processors can’t run in 16-bit mode if they were booted in 64-bit mode, so if you’ve got an old 16-bit Windows/DOS/CPM app that you’ve absolutely got to run natively instead of through DOSBox and have to use modern Windows instead of an older version, it needs to be 32-bit. By the time Windows 11 released, Microsoft had decided that nearly no one still wanted to do that anymore.
I ran it, and it was a (poorly) rebadged version of server 2003.
At least one app I used, refused to install on it because they “didn’t support server operating systems” … Yeah. That actually happened. It picked it up as the server 2003 version that XP 64bit edition was based on.
I should add, Debian is more “bare bones” than more gaming focused distros. e.g. flatpak isn’t installed by default on Debian, so you have to take that step before you can install steam via the gnome store or command line. It’s not difficult, but it is an additional step.
When I first read that the ship a dedicated Distrobox container just for Steam, I was utterly confused as to what the benefit would be and I still cannot see it. Maybe the Bazzite developers dislike some of the restricted permissions of the Steam Flatpak or maybe they just want to package it on their own but the benefit for the user escapes me.
I’ve read another comment and then I realized it’s because of Bazzite’s Game Mode session. It’s a special login session and not just Steam in Big Picture Mode. Flatpaks cannot be used for this kind of specific use case.
This is what I hate about flatpak. I shouldn’t have to just know what random permission something needs. It should be marked with what permissions it requires, and then prompt for whether or not to grant them when it’s launched.
If the permission was necessary, the Flathub package would enable it by default. I can’t remember ever having a bad experience with the Flathub package.
steam itself is moving towards 64-bit on linux on well, but fact is that most games are 32-bit and linux doesn’t have the same compatibility guarantees as windows since you can just recompile software to run on new systems. you can’t do that with old games, so you need multilib.
I believe wine has a WoW64 implementation now, to allow 32 bit software to run on 64 bit wine prefixes. Which means any windows games (unless they are 16 bit) can work on 64 bit non-multi-arch system.
Linux games are the core problem. But they also have a Steam Runtime where they ship the entire runtime libraries needed to run a game for compatibility reasons… and Steam Runtime 4.0 (which just shipped and/or announced a few days ago?) is set up for only 64 bit systems.
So if the answer is:
Steam itself can be 64 bit, and is moving that direction
Windows games can be 64 bit only due to proton/wine handling the 32bit translation in WoW64
Linux games themselves can be any architecture since the steam runtime manages the libraries for the games.
Then the answer is just “they’re getting around to it, they are only just now getting around to it for windows, and linux is a lower priority” because clearly its all possible.
So “What about linux?” is just asking if there is a timeline for the speed that things are moving in that direction.
Running Steam should be fully independent of running games.
At least the client. You might still need some 32-bit libs if a game uses steamworks drm. I’m not sure how stuff like the overlay or achievements are integrated.
It’s been a couple years since I used Gentoo. I thought multilib was pretty smooth and everything just worked. I don’t remember installing steam through flatpak. Is multilib broken in Gentoo? Am I forgetting something?
It may be totally fine, it’s just a (at least perceived) can of worms that I didn’t want to open, especially when steam is the only reason I’d need to deal with it. I definitely had trouble with it in the past but probably my own fault.
Sucks for retro systems. Without the steam client you can’t install, for example, Zanzarrah, which is pretty hard to get running on a modern PC, but runs flawlessly on a XP machine. What to do? Download illegal copies?
Steam should maintain at least legacy systems or make the installer available for download.
This is one of the things I really like about using steam with Linux. For some of the old windows games I’ve tried they actually run better under proton than on modern windows. It helps you can easily swap to other compatibility tools like proton GE or Luxtorpeda.
Interesting. My experience differed quite a lot, for example Gabriel Knight 3 was almost impossible to get running, and when it finally worked it was lagging as hell.Gabriel Knight 2 had it’s aspect ratios all over the place, it often switched to stretched after a cut scene, I found no fix for it online. The other one I tried was Realms of the Haunting, and it worked great until I reached the tower. From this point on it crashed every few minutes.
GTA4 (with fusion fix) is a great example of this. Runs like dogshit on my system with Windows 11, runs butter smooth on the same hardware running Fedora 43.
I feel like this is a good argument for drm-free games and stores like GOG. Not that you as a consumer can always choose that, as many games don’t offer that option, but for the ones that do, there’s less barriers towards playing it in the future or in environments where it’s not originally intended.
There is steamcmd, an official command-line tool— I’ve only used it for game servers, and I don’t know if it includes the Steam runtime/resources, but I know it lets you download games.
You could look at Goldberg Emulator too. I know it’s used often for piracy, but idk about its legality on its own.
Since you mentioned GOG, another relevant thing about them is their game preservation initiatives. Games that get the Good Old Game stamp from them get some engineering effort to be packaged in a runnable way.
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Valve is supporting windows 10 even better than microsoft
Well. Way to give up on the 32-bit dream steam. Jeez. Does nobody hold the line anymore? Who cares that a 32-bit processor probably hasn’t been sold in over a decade? Stick to your guns steam. Everyone told you that it was idiotic not to update to 64-bit and you ignored them. I respected that. A sad day for a poor decision.
I legitimately cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not
Let me clear that up for you: yes it is or it is not.
Hope that helps.
Whyyyyyyyyyyyyy
Yes
🥺
I was super cereal.
God damnit
I can
i cannot WAIT until this comes to Linux
It makes sense to deprecate the 32-bit client. Win 10 32-bit was already pretty rare and any Linux distro has been 64-bit for the last decade.
Plus surely the browser libraries like CEF are in danger of being unsupported in 32 bit land at some point, if they’re not already.
It’s not just that. Imagine the dependency management trying to hold onto 32 bit compatibility.
i don’t have to imagine it!
thanks to Steam, my Linux install is full of 32-bit shit libraries (or shitlibs for short)
O, god yes.
We had this discussion at my company. And the result was we swapped over in our next major version and told any customer who couldn’t run a 64-bit program to get an OS made in the last decade. (no customer complained)
holy crap I just looked it up and there are supposedly 32bit only versions of windows 10. I thought for sure that ended with xp.
The main point of 32-bit Windows 10 wasn’t to make it run on non-64-bit hardware, it’s that x86 processors can’t run in 16-bit mode if they were booted in 64-bit mode, so if you’ve got an old 16-bit Windows/DOS/CPM app that you’ve absolutely got to run natively instead of through DOSBox and have to use modern Windows instead of an older version, it needs to be 32-bit. By the time Windows 11 released, Microsoft had decided that nearly no one still wanted to do that anymore.
Running 64-bit XP was actually kind of rare
I ran it, and it was a (poorly) rebadged version of server 2003.
At least one app I used, refused to install on it because they “didn’t support server operating systems” … Yeah. That actually happened. It picked it up as the server 2003 version that XP 64bit edition was based on.
I just about jumped right off a bridge.
Nobody wanted XP without Space Cadet Pinball
Technically it was just only recently that ms no longer has mainstream support for 32bit oses, as they only dropped that with windows 11.
Makes me think that might be the reason for valve choosing now to do this.
And what about Linux? A month ago I still had to go multi-arch on my x64 Debian system, leading to a lot of problems…
That’s what Flatpak is for. 32bit crap is moved into its own corner without interfering with any system level stuff.
Doesn’t the Flatpak version have it’s own issues? I’m considering just installing Bazzite on a separate partition.
I’ve been using Steam via flatpak on Debian without any issues (yet) since Trixie released.
Thanks, I’ll give that a try then!
I should add, Debian is more “bare bones” than more gaming focused distros. e.g. flatpak isn’t installed by default on Debian, so you have to take that step before you can install steam via the gnome store or command line. It’s not difficult, but it is an additional step.
Bazzite has Steam preinstalled, and in fact it blocks the installation of Flatpak Steam
When I first read that the ship a dedicated Distrobox container just for Steam, I was utterly confused as to what the benefit would be
and I still cannot see it. Maybe the Bazzite developers dislike some of the restricted permissions of the Steam Flatpak or maybe they just want to package it on their own but the benefit for the user escapes me.I’ve read another comment and then I realized it’s because of Bazzite’s Game Mode session. It’s a special login session and not just Steam in Big Picture Mode. Flatpaks cannot be used for this kind of specific use case.
Yes, it doesn’t work out of the box. Proton games literally won’t launch. You need to run this command (at least on atomic distros):
flatpak permission-set background background com.valvesoftware.Steam yes
https://github.com/AeonDesktop/Project/wiki/Troubleshooting#steam-flatpak-opens-but-cant-start-games
Mangohud also doesn’t work without modifications, as well as a couple games having absolutely abysmal framerates like rocket league.
Gamemode doesn’t work AFAIK
It is a worse experience in general, but works for a lot of people.
This is what I hate about flatpak. I shouldn’t have to just know what random permission something needs. It should be marked with what permissions it requires, and then prompt for whether or not to grant them when it’s launched.
If the permission was necessary, the Flathub package would enable it by default. I can’t remember ever having a bad experience with the Flathub package.
deleted by creator
Issues likeee?
flips table and jumps out the window
Every distro has supported 64-bit programs for the last decade. Why aren’t you able to run 64-bit programs?
Correct, so why does steam on linux still run as a 32 bit app and require 32 bit libraries to run games.
steam itself is moving towards 64-bit on linux on well, but fact is that most games are 32-bit and linux doesn’t have the same compatibility guarantees as windows since you can just recompile software to run on new systems. you can’t do that with old games, so you need multilib.
I believe wine has a WoW64 implementation now, to allow 32 bit software to run on 64 bit wine prefixes. Which means any windows games (unless they are 16 bit) can work on 64 bit non-multi-arch system.
Linux games are the core problem. But they also have a Steam Runtime where they ship the entire runtime libraries needed to run a game for compatibility reasons… and Steam Runtime 4.0 (which just shipped and/or announced a few days ago?) is set up for only 64 bit systems.
So if the answer is:
Then the answer is just “they’re getting around to it, they are only just now getting around to it for windows, and linux is a lower priority” because clearly its all possible.
So “What about linux?” is just asking if there is a timeline for the speed that things are moving in that direction.
i think the wine-wow64 thing is pretty new though, right?
Looks like it was introduced with Wine 9.0 in January of 2024
Running Steam should be fully independent of running games.
At least the client. You might still need some 32-bit libs if a game uses steamworks drm. I’m not sure how stuff like the overlay or achievements are integrated.
as long as steam is the parent process it would still matter, right?
this is about steam, a proprietary program only available as a 64-bit executable
hell hath frozen over
Cannot wait for the day I can uninstall flatpak steam on my Gentoo system and just install through portage, without dealing with 32 bit libraries
It’s been a couple years since I used Gentoo. I thought multilib was pretty smooth and everything just worked. I don’t remember installing steam through flatpak. Is multilib broken in Gentoo? Am I forgetting something?
It may be totally fine, it’s just a (at least perceived) can of worms that I didn’t want to open, especially when steam is the only reason I’d need to deal with it. I definitely had trouble with it in the past but probably my own fault.
Totally understand. I wouldn’t run Gentoo these days without using the binary repo. Have better things to do with my time.
I have 5800X3D and 64GB RAM so compilation is not a problem for me, especially if I just run updates overnight
It was inevitable.
No! keep it around ive grown fond of it.
Whoa, wait up! I still have a soft spot for the 32-bit Steam client. Can’t we keep it around just a bit longer?
I just think 64 is to many bits.
We are keeping it around for a bit longer… Like… A month.
Sucks for retro systems. Without the steam client you can’t install, for example, Zanzarrah, which is pretty hard to get running on a modern PC, but runs flawlessly on a XP machine. What to do? Download illegal copies?
Steam should maintain at least legacy systems or make the installer available for download.
This is one of the things I really like about using steam with Linux. For some of the old windows games I’ve tried they actually run better under proton than on modern windows. It helps you can easily swap to other compatibility tools like proton GE or Luxtorpeda.
Interesting. My experience differed quite a lot, for example Gabriel Knight 3 was almost impossible to get running, and when it finally worked it was lagging as hell.Gabriel Knight 2 had it’s aspect ratios all over the place, it often switched to stretched after a cut scene, I found no fix for it online. The other one I tried was Realms of the Haunting, and it worked great until I reached the tower. From this point on it crashed every few minutes.
GTA4 (with fusion fix) is a great example of this. Runs like dogshit on my system with Windows 11, runs butter smooth on the same hardware running Fedora 43.
Win XP has a 64bit edition, it was just never the default.
That abomination should not have been made.
It’s not illegal if you’ve bought it.
Does it use steamworks drm? You could download it on a new PC and move it over if not.
It probably still works in a VM on under compatibility layers like Linux with Wine/proton/whatever, too.
I feel like this is a good argument for drm-free games and stores like GOG. Not that you as a consumer can always choose that, as many games don’t offer that option, but for the ones that do, there’s less barriers towards playing it in the future or in environments where it’s not originally intended.
There is steamcmd, an official command-line tool— I’ve only used it for game servers, and I don’t know if it includes the Steam runtime/resources, but I know it lets you download games.
You could look at Goldberg Emulator too. I know it’s used often for piracy, but idk about its legality on its own.
Since you mentioned GOG, another relevant thing about them is their game preservation initiatives. Games that get the Good Old Game stamp from them get some engineering effort to be packaged in a runnable way.
I don’t know if it is a real solution but can 64-bit be emulated on a 32-bit system?
Probably not with any usable level of performance. It’s not just about address width but CPU instruction set, too.