Posted June 23, 2019
adamhm: Someone on GamingOnLinux asked about what Mint will do and got this reply:
It’s a very good question but it’s a little bit soon for us to answer. It definitely means there won’t be a 32-bit version of Mint 20, but we’ll do everything we can to ship functional versions of Steam, Wine and popular 32-bit libs and applications. I can’t answer this without first knowing whether Ubuntu will address these issues, but I can confirm these are important to us and we’ll make sure they’re not overlooked.
adamhm: So they'll either have to handle 32-bit support themselves (or collaborate with another group for it) or re-base on Debian or so (Linux Mint Debian Edition is already a thing)
Thanks for the quote from Clem. Bad news about such a clear statement on Mint 20 on 32-bit, but hopefully stuff will happen between now and Mint 20 that means the fallout won't be as disastrous as it looks right now. If "normal" Mint is perma-crocked, I hope it will be possible (also for the newbs among us) to switch over to Debian Mint and it will be a fairly painless process, while retaining the ability to run games like in the past. It’s a very good question but it’s a little bit soon for us to answer. It definitely means there won’t be a 32-bit version of Mint 20, but we’ll do everything we can to ship functional versions of Steam, Wine and popular 32-bit libs and applications. I can’t answer this without first knowing whether Ubuntu will address these issues, but I can confirm these are important to us and we’ll make sure they’re not overlooked.
Presumably many/all of your wrappers depend on 32-bit libs working too?
Are there murmurs of other distros doing this as well? I sure hope not!