Hi!
Sorry, it's only very recently I noticed this topic.

Like the avatar, like "On Linux, you don't beat games. But it's Linux beating you!" :D

I was wondering if it would be possible for gog to host the 32bit libraries Ubuntu/Debian libraries that are needed for 32 bit Linux games since its becoming quite a hassle of finding them all.

Especially since 32bit Linux has been deprecated quite sometime ago.

which libraries are we talking about?
afaik that is only a problem for libraries that have become obsolete and got removed (or will get removed), like libpng12.
but that affects 64bit versions as well.
aside from that ubuntu/debian are still distributing 32bit libraries. and I don't see that changing in the near future

32bit linux != 32bit libraries

For example these are not available on Ubuntu17.10 anymore: libc6:i386 libasound2:i386 libasound2-data:i386 libasound2-plugins:i386 libsdl2-2.0-0:i386 libfreetype6:i386 libqtgui4:i386 libcurl3-gnutls:i386 libglew1.10:i386 and dependencies.

At least not without breaking half of the system while installing them. All I wanted is to have a repository where I could download them as a file and put them on to the pc without directly installing them. I did that before but I cant find where I can download them again. I mean just saying that gog could make it a lot easier for entry level Linux users.

Eitherway this is not a thread for discussing this. Just meant as a question for Linuxvangog since this is the thread where we can ask about stuff.

hmm, they all seem to be available for i386 actually:
e.g.:
https://packages.ubuntu.com/artful/libc6
https://packages.ubuntu.com/artful/libasound2
https://packages.ubuntu.com/artful/libsdl2-2.0-0

if ubuntu breaks while installing them it would be more worthwhile to report that to ubuntu so that they can fix that mess. that would be more helpful (for everybody) than vendors(like GOG) taking over the job of a linux distribution in maintaining these libraries.

Yeah, *buntu 17.10 and 18.04 going to stir it up a bit, 32b going to be slowly phased out even from libraries. The situation was sort of "working out of box" for too many years I guess. And I don't see any simple way out of this.

Well, at the moment you can find all those 32b libraries in previous distro repositories, which are available for download even through web, like: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/zesty/i386/libasound2/1.1.3-5

Not sure how much that will help, if it will just crash the game, or work for now.

In the future it looks like dual booting to 16.04 may be needed... I don't expect the game creators to suddenly upgrade all their source to 64b libraries, fix all the problems, and produce new binaries. Oh, where have I seen this problem before, wasn't it "how to run DOS games in windows? .. and then later how to run WinXP games on Win10? And then later..." :/

Or maybe just some VM with older 32b kernel, but providing HW accelerated virtualization.

The 100% correct solution is of course release of the game sources, and then waiting until somebody skilled enough is interested to upgrade them to 64b. With 5+ year old games, maybe the developers should consider this lot more seriously, just see how it works for games like DOOM3, etc... They still have constantly updated source-ports, playing well with modern systems.

EDIT: wait, as immi101 points out, they are still available even in artful and bionic, so this problem is somewhat more distant... now I'm not sure any more, what's the problem.

Alternatively, one can use a chroot or container; virtualize the file system but not the kernel, CPU, or graphics hardware. This will allow (and already does!) 32 bit games to play on an otherwise 64 bit system without issues.

(Of course, it would also help if programs avoided unnecessary dependencies on less stable libraries like openssl; Undertale fails because of that reason, though that particular game's Windows version works well in WINE.)

I host some on ./play.it website:
libpng 1.2 32-bit
libssl 1.0.0 32-bit

Feel free to request more, I’ll see if I can provide them too.

32-bit Linux has never been deprecated, you probably got your informations mixed up ;)

-----

Undertale works out of the box thanks to ./play.it, natively of course ;)
Undertale [./play.it]

Hai! Can I ask you to look up the game-breaking bug in Quest for Infamy? The developer doesn't seem to care at all. The game is on sale and the only thing that he makes is:
a) asks to patch each individual SAVE GAME
b) tells that he'll "look into it" (TM)

Thank you, LVG!

I personally like and use Flatpak.

But what do you think, about Snaps and Flatpaks ?

I think these formats can help solve various problems regarding "outdated" or "missing" libraries, specially for us using (Arch Linux, openSUSE Tumbleweed, etc).

Btw, I'm using Tumbleweed. :)

I don't think it helps for missing libraries any more than regular bundling and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The main benefit there is better isolation for security.

Link to a post clearly addressed to GOG's Linux staff: https://www.gog.com/forum/divinity_series/where_is_chinese_for_linux_user

That depends on the game. I never play my copy of The Escapists because:

1. It clutters up my homedir with a non-hidden save folder. (And, given that hiding is a function of filenames on Linux, un-hideable... which is the real problem.)

2. Unlike other games with this problem, rather than using $HOME (which is solvable with export HOME="$HOME/.local/share/GameName in a wrapper script), it retrieves the undesired location directly from /etc/passwd using either getpwuid or getpwnam (I can't remember which one showed up in the strace output).

3. A wrapper script which moves the save folder out of ~/.local/share before the game starts and moves it back after it exits would interact badly with my incremental backup cronjob if I happen to be playing when it runs.

As soon as I have time to migrate off Lubuntu 14.04 LTS to something newer, I'm planning to incorporate Flatpak into the open-source Steam and Galaxy alternative I've been working on (on hold at the moment due to other obligations) to make it flat-out impossible for games to doodle on my walls with their metaphorical crayons.

(It'll also give me the ability to kill off Unity analyics pings, as I'm ideologically opposed to having apps phone home without so much as a cautionary notice, let alone a permission prompt.)

One possible workaround, if you don't mind writing a little bit of C.

1. Create a shared library. This shared library should contain a function with the same name and signature that strace shows the program is calling, and should return the data you want the program to use.

2. When starting the game, use LD_PRELOAD to force your shared library to load before the game loads it.

Now, when the game calls the function, it will get your version of the function instead of glibc's wrapper of the system call.