As reiterated by the OP, the proposal is just a proposal and was proposed with heaps of lead time probably because they expected it to be controversial.
As also mentioned, heaps of volunteer time is spent maintaining the packages where most are barely used (even for gaming).
However, it does not seem like there is a viable alternative. Many comments say the suggested alternative, WINE’s WoW64, does not work for all games.
I can see both sides here. Fedora maintainers says “this is so much work!” and (mostly) gamers saying “But older games will stop working!”.
The response from the Bazzite guy does seem overblown to me. I would think the first step is to work out the impact, as I haven’t seen anyone quantify what proportion of games are affected and if there are alternatives like emulation.
It seems to me that 16-bit applications are already basically broken with 32-bit wine if you’re running a 64-bit kernel, by default it places extra restrictions over what the hardware already does to prevent apps from loading 16-bit code entirely.
I’m wondering what the problem even is. I mean, can’t you just put all the stuff relevant to 32 bit gaming into a ‘retro-gaming’ package and be like “there, now if you want updates, better find maintainers”?
If you have an old game, chances are you won’t need many new features. Only problem could be other packages or the kernel becoming incompatible. I don’t know how relevant that is in this instance.
As reiterated by the OP, the proposal is just a proposal and was proposed with heaps of lead time probably because they expected it to be controversial.
As also mentioned, heaps of volunteer time is spent maintaining the packages where most are barely used (even for gaming).
However, it does not seem like there is a viable alternative. Many comments say the suggested alternative, WINE’s WoW64, does not work for all games.
I can see both sides here. Fedora maintainers says “this is so much work!” and (mostly) gamers saying “But older games will stop working!”.
The response from the Bazzite guy does seem overblown to me. I would think the first step is to work out the impact, as I haven’t seen anyone quantify what proportion of games are affected and if there are alternatives like emulation.
Ok but is that because of fundamental limitations, or just because of bugs?
One’s easier to fix than the other.
If it works like real WoW64, then 16 bit applications won’t work ever but 32 bit applications that don’t work will be because of fixable bugs.
It seems to me that 16-bit applications are already basically broken with 32-bit wine if you’re running a 64-bit kernel, by default it places extra restrictions over what the hardware already does to prevent apps from loading 16-bit code entirely.
https://gitlab.winehq.org/wine/wine/-/wikis/FAQ#16-bit-applications-fail-to-start
Guessing that’s why they don’t feel it’s that important to continue supporting, seems a VM is the future for these apps.
I’m wondering what the problem even is. I mean, can’t you just put all the stuff relevant to 32 bit gaming into a ‘retro-gaming’ package and be like “there, now if you want updates, better find maintainers”?
If you have an old game, chances are you won’t need many new features. Only problem could be other packages or the kernel becoming incompatible. I don’t know how relevant that is in this instance.
Yea dependency management without updates is like 80% of the work that goes into package maintenance