Steam Client Beta - Steam Client Beta - October 15th - Steam News
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The Steam Client Beta has been updated with the following changes: Steam Achievement SetsA new way to organize, track, and complete a game's achievements. Read more details in the announcement. Games can now organize and group achievements for base game and DLC content DLC achievements can be added via sets without breaking game completion Completed achievement sets remain completed when new sets are added Achievements and sets can be archived if they are seasonal or can no longer be...
    • Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      wrong, instead it is still 32 bit

      With this first part of your sentence you are directly contradicting the words in the primary source, so do you have good evidence for this?

      For reference here’s the relevant part from the primary source:

      Linux

      • The Steam client is now a 64bit application.
      • The Steam client now runs inside a Steam Runtime container.
        • This will help the Steam client provide a more consistent experience across multiple distributions. This is the same technology used by Steam games.
  • mhz (ex lemm.ee)@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Great news, no more headache with 32bit libraries. Now we need wayland support to get rid of xwayland and anything xorg as well.

    • toddestan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      24 hours ago

      I assume we’ll still need the 32 bit libraries to play 32 bit games, which at this point is probably just older games that will never be updated. I guess it depends on what you like to play, but I’ll be stuck with them for some time yet.

  • miadidi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    Does this mean I won’t need the multilib Arch repo anymore? Or at-least after it has matured enough to not need 32bit stuff?

      • somereaduser@reddthat.comEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        I meant in the sense that will distros as a whole drop support for games that use 32bit packages? Will proton and wine stop supporting 32bit games, etc etc

        My question was predicated upon the fact that Steam is a market mover, and what are the downstream ramifications of this transition.

        • BlackLaZoR@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          Will proton and wine stop supporting 32bit games, etc etc

          Wine/Proton has near complete support for WOW64 aka supports running 32bit apps on 64bit

        • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.mlEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          If your game currently runs on your hardware with your distro then it is very unlikely it will stop running unless you change your handware or your software (like a major update). Can I promise 32 bit will be supported forever? No. But it’s certainly not going to suddenly stop working because of this.

  • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Kinda funny to think that I won’t be living through any more migrations to the next power of 2. They happened so rapidly at first.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      0·
      2 days ago

      Each “bit” in the architecture is mainly related to how many different memory positions you can address with a CPU opcode (i.e. an assembly command) that needs to access memory or with a CPU register that holds an address in memory (so an 8 bit register can only address 256 memory positions, a 16 bits one 65,538 memory positions, a 32 bit one 4,294,967,296 memory positions and so on) - basically every additional bit in the register size of a CPU that addresses memory roughly doubles the memory that CPU can access and thus use (not considering hacks to go around those limits, such as the Spectrum 128K had).

      Meanwhile Moore’s Law predicts that “the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years” which for integrated circuits roughly means that every two years the amount of memory that can be in the same integrated circuit area doubles.

      So if Moore’s Law kept working, each architecture bit roughly gives you two more years until the availability of memory catches up- This means that the transition from 32-bit to 64-bit architectures per Moore’s Law gave us 64 years until we have to move to an architecture with more bits because memory available is so big that CPUs are unable to use so much memory.

      Were we are now, 64 bits is enough to address 8 Exabytes of memory.

      That said, extrapolating from the current trend in growth of memory in PCs, we will reach the point when we will start hitting the constraints of that in … NEVER - thanks to the AI bubble the newer PCs are coming out with the same or less memory than the previous generation, so the trend of available memory is not upwards but downwards.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      Moore’s Law finally caught up with our ability to make rocks calculate for us. It was going to happen eventually, I find it somewhat comforting that hardware has finally plateaued, and will only get incremental changes for a while. It means that the next computer I build, I can expect it to last for multiple decades, rather than just one.

      • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        Ohh fear not! Hardware didn’t plateau. Our current architectural needs plateaued. We’re still doing everything on 2d layers layers in a way that makes things organized. I’m sure they’ll shove AI in there and the next gen stuff will be unsupportable chaotic 3D tetris stuff and the memory/bus sizes will be old hat.

      • XiJinpingStanAccount@lemmy.mlEnglish
        0·
        2 days ago

        The thing is though that now build quality is going to matter WAY more. Like you need that laptop chassis built like a tank. Which is harder to find in new devices these days.

        • frank@sopuli.xyzEnglish
          0·
          2 days ago

          Yeah, and power supplies and such that aren’t limited by silicon but capacitor cycling are going to matter more and be limiting factors. Replaceable batteries and power management in phones, laptops, etc are going to be crucial

  • jaycifer@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 days ago

    Noob question here, but what’s the benefit of moving an application like Steam to 64bit? I understand for memory intensive applications it allows for more memory usage (it was a big deal when Stellaris made the change) but does Steam often use more than 4 GB of memory?

    • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      One of the reasons Steam held out for so long was that a lot of the games they host are 32-bit only. Games are built by a company, many of which have gone belly-up, so rebuilding the game from scratch is impossible. Making Steam 32 bit even though it could be 64 bit is a really effective way to guarantee a large chunk of their legacy products will still run. In a lot of ways, because of the nature of the gaming industry, Steam has it worse than most package managers/app stores.

      • SirActionSack@aussie.zoneEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        I don’t think it works like that. 64 bit Steam can manage 32 bit games just like a 64 bit OS can run 32 bit games.

      • utopiah@lemmy.worldEnglish
        0·
        3 days ago

        I’m not sure as that’s about Steam the client though not on Proton thus Wine, which I bet will keep on supporting 32bit apps.

        • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
          0·
          3 days ago

          Remember that the portion of Steam users that use Proton regularly is less than 10%, if you include Deck users. That number is rising and is probably a major factor in the decision to switch, but it’s still a minority.

          • mnemonicmonkeys@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            It still doesn’t matter for the Steam client. All it does is point to games and tell them to boot. The client itself doesn’t act as a compatibility layer so the 32-bit vs 64-bit game argument isn’t relevant

    • cecilkorik@piefed.caEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      The benefit to/for Steam itself is marginal. The benefit to the entire community is significant, because there’s now an entire metric shitload of obsolete 32-bit shit that can be safely deleted and forgotten for 95% of the Linux world and efforts can be focused on things that actually matter in the 64-bit world. The entire 32-bit ecosystem of libraries and system layers still had to be maintained and supported basically only for Steam’s sake, Steam was the only thing still using them for the vast majority of people. It’s not that Steam needs 64-bit, it’s that 64-bit is the standard now and has been for a long time, and Steam was the only thing that had no 64-bit version.

      It’s kind of like cutting loose the anchor that the community has been dragging around everywhere for years for no purpose. It was a totally unnecessary effort that just caused suffering and added no value.

          • chronicledmonocle@lemmy.worldEnglish
            0·
            2 days ago

            Unfortunately, SteamVR with Flatpak is busted unless you use something like WiVRn. If you try to use something like the Steam Link app on an Android-based VR headset to do direct SteamVR streaming, it won’t work on the Flatpak because of permissions.

            Source: Been wishing I could use SteamVR on my gaming PC for a while without a third party solution.

    • bisby@lemmy.worldEnglish
      0·
      3 days ago

      One of the benefits is only needing to have 64 bit libraries. With this change most people can drop their 32 bit stuff.

      Bits are literally “binary digits”. So more bits means bigger numbers. The reason you get more memory, is because when the code says “put this data in memory spot (number bigger than 32 bits)” … you cant with only 32 bits. How do you represent that number.

      Imagine that you want to put something in memory spot 150, but you only have 2 digits. You cant. Bumping it up to 4 digits, you can say “put this data in memory address 0150” and its fine. “bigger numbers == more addresses == more places to put stuff”

      So anywhere you need a number bigger than 32 bit represents, you can either just use a 64 bit number, or do a bunch of shenanigans. Those shenanigans require extra calculations inevitably. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,147,483,647 If youve ever seen this number before, it’s probably because of a 32 bit limitation. It shows up all sorts of weird ways.

      Bigger numbers here aren’t about taking up more space, just representing literally bigger numbers. “9999” only takes up 2x as much “space” as “99” but it repesents a number ~100x bigger.

      Sorry, I’m tired and rambling.