Windows users don’t have to concern themselves with what libraries they need to have installed when they just want to play something, but the Linux platform is still struggling with this problem. The Solus developers have solved the issue for their OS, by integrating the much-needed 32-bit glibc and its dependencies.
If you have ever installed Steam on a Linux machine, you know that it asks for the Sudo password to install a large number of 32-bit libraries, but we’re now doing it out of reflex and don’t think too much about it. It’s actually annoying to install stuff that you shouldn’t really need after so many years following the 64-bit platform’s becoming the de facto standard.
The Steam client is a 32-bit application, and at this point, I think that Valve is too afraid to start building a new 64-bit version. For now, it’s not broken and there is no reason to fix it, but it will become a problem in the next few years. Valve’s complacency also forces Linux developers to do some extra work in order to ingrate stuff like 32-bit glibc and the billion or so dependencies.
Solus operating system is now a proper gaming distro
The ability to install Steam without having to resort to the internet for solutions should be something normal. Most Linux distros make some kind of effort on behalf of the users who want to play games, but not all of them.
“Tada, one 32-bit glibc. Now to flesh out the other stages and I guess we’ll get back to you when Steam is in the repos,” Ikey Doherty wrote on Google+. This mean that installing Steam from the official repos is coming once the Solus developers put all the pieces together.
Solus should be here sometime in the next couple of weeks, and it would be a shame if we can’t play games on it, although it looks that’s not going to be the case.
Via Softpedia