{"id":175298,"date":"2025-06-30T12:56:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-30T12:56:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/?p=175298"},"modified":"2025-06-30T13:08:54","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T13:08:54","slug":"fedora-holds-off-on-dropping-i686-citing-community-needs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/fedora-holds-off-on-dropping-i686-citing-community-needs\/","title":{"rendered":"Fedora Holds Off on Dropping i686, Citing Community Needs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Things have heated up in the Fedora community over the past week thanks to two controversial proposals. The first suggested replacing Xorg with the new XLibre project<\/a>, but after a wave of pushback<\/a> from Fedora developers, that idea was quickly withdrawn<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, another bold proposal<\/a> has met a similar end. Just a week ago, Fabio Valentini, a member of the Fedora Engineering Steering Committee (FESCo), proposed dropping i686 support and 32-bit multilib compatibility starting with Fedora 44 (scheduled for release in mid-April 2026).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you can expect, this sparked strong reactions and has stirred up much debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main concerns about this change centered on its impact on Wine and Steam, both of which depend heavily on 32-bit libraries. Put simply, it would\u2019ve caused major issues for Fedora gaming enthusiasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After another heated debate, Valentini released a statement<\/a> saying he was withdrawing his proposal due to the strong opposition it had faced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Given feedback in this thread (and to a lesser extent, also on the mailing list) I have decided to withdraw this proposal. It is clear that the Fedora 44 target for this Change was too early. To some degree, I expected this to be the case, and was prepared to move the proposed implementation of the Change to a later release. Fedora 44 was just the earliest \u201creasonable\u201d target.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Still, it’s hard to miss the slightly bitter tone in Valentini’s comment about how some Fedora developers reacted to his proposal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

I am disappointed in some of the reactions this proposal has received, with some people apparently reading it in the most uncharitable way. It was a proposal that tried to address technical problems package maintainers and release engineering is facing, not some conspiracy to break the \u201cgaming use case\u201d. That said, I was expecting a lot of feedback feedback on this one, but not hundreds of people shouting “DON\u2019T DO THIS WHY DON\u2019T YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR USERS I WILL SWITCH DISTROS IMMEDIATELY” levels of feedback.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

So, for now, anyone still relying on i686\u2014especially gamers using Fedora\u2014can breathe a sigh of relief: support isn\u2019t going away just yet. Of course, it\u2019s bound to happen at some point, but we can confidently say that it won\u2019t be within the next year and a half to two years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information, read the entire discussion here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fedora 44\u2019s proposal to drop i686 support has been withdrawn following backlash, especially over its potential impact on Linux gaming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":175301,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5],"tags":[2040,6389,1353,1356,1803],"class_list":["post-175298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-os","category-news","tag-fedora","tag-fedora-44","tag-games","tag-steam","tag-wine"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175298"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175298\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175301"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linuxiac.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}