Monogame: Dropping win-x86 support

[mrhelmut]

Hello there,

I'd like to propose the end of support for 32bit systems.

We already dropped linux-x86 (which is not even a thing on .Net Core, and we can expect Microsoft to drop win-x86 soon enough too), but we used to keep win-x86 around because it still had some share, but recently it completely dropped down to zero on Steam hardware survey. Our personal data indicates a non measurable share (>0.01% of players).

By dropping win-x86, we could assume MonoGame to be 64bit-only and stop managing dependencies and their discovery in separate folders (farewell all those x86/x64 dll mapping).

What do you think?

[NicusorN5]

I know so many people having ancient computers that can't run 2010 games properly , w/ some x86 computers. Count the fact that they never heard of Steam, or anything like that. I was one of these too before 2014. I had a 950 GHz processor + 1 GB ram.

But talking the Steam hardware survey generally, then I think it is safe.

[Jjagg]

Very tempting!

Steam hardware survey still puts .45% on 32-bit Windows:

Windows 7: 0.30%
Windows 10: 0.15%

@mrhelmut I read your numbers are smaller than that?
Dropping 32-bit completely would save us some trouble going forward, but as long as deps don't change there's no harm in keeping the libs around, I suppose.

[ryancheung]

There are still many ancient Windows like 32bit Win7 or even WinXP in China. I suggest just keep win-x86 as soon as win-x86 dotnet still exists.

[harry-cpp]

If we do drop it, you can still manually compile the needed 32 bit if you want to, its just that its not gonna be officially supported/provided by us.

[mrhelmut]

MonoGame intends to officially support only .Net Core/.Net 5+ moving forward, which doesn't run on Windows XP/Vista (minimum is Windows 7 SP1).
Keeping a Windows XP support would require to maintain a .Net 4.0 compatibility (which is the most recent .Net runtime available there), and presently MonoGame's minimum is .Net 4.5 (which therefore rules out XP).

Like Harry noted, ending the official 32bit support wouldn't mean that MonoGame would stop working on those systems. It would just mean to manually maintain/publish the 32bit dependencies and build process. And MonoGame 3.8 would still be around to provide a legacy 32bit support.

This is an assumption, but I believe that the 32bit numbers are this low because of MonoGame's OpenGL 3.0/DirectX 10 requirement, which I would assume already filters out 32bit systems.

[tomspilman]

They always have the 10 previous years of MonoGame releases to fall back on or XNA if they need 32bit.

I would be fine to see us phase it out in 3.9 or 3.10. For sure the 4.x stuff would be 64bit only.

[harry-cpp]

and arm :)

[willmotil]

_MonoGame intends to officially support only .Net Core/.Net 5+ moving forward, which doesn't run on Windows XP/Vista (minimum is Windows 7 SP1).
Keeping a Windows XP support would require to maintain a .Net 4.0 compatibility (which is the most recent .Net runtime available there), and presently MonoGame's minimum is .Net 4.5 (which therefore rules out XP)._

I just want to point out.

No one should even be running XP or Vista at all anymore, they don't even have critical update support anymore meaning no security hotfixes bot machines. Win7 ended support in January it's usage will drop like a rock. I think i remember reading win 8.1 is due to be phased out for critical updates and security hotfixes next year if anyone actually still uses that.

But ya arm i tried to find usage statistics on arm 32 bit vs 64 bit but couldn't find a source.

[harry-cpp]

Mac devices are fully switching to arm, and for Linux devices like Raspberry Pi and Pinephone are a thing.

[NicusorN5]

About dropping Windows XP support - some of my friends won't be able to play my games.

[tomspilman]

@NicusorN5 - They would still be able to.

If you release with 3.8 or older versions of MG they still work. Just like XNA still works although it hasn't seen an update in 6 years.

Also future versions of MG will should still be able to be built from source to target 32bit. It will just take a little work to add the right 32bit native libraries instead of 64bit ones.

And everything we're talking about is likely 6 months or more away.

[ryancheung]

I think drop XP is fine. It's too old. It's very rare for gamer.