Where it kind of hurts is on the laptop. I can run Catalina on it, but I like playing adventure games on it while relaxing. And many of those are 32 bit. So I guess I’ll eventually just have to sit in the chair and play them on the tower.

Is there a way to make a 64 bit wrapper for 32 bit apps, like the way wine can make an OS X app?

Yeah, I hear you. There are a few things I'll probably never play again outside of a lot of effort to run an old virtual machine.

I'm not sure it's quite as simple as wine. Wine works by re-implementing (not emulating) the libraries that the windows system uses to run. Because linux/mac runs on the same x86 CPUs, wine allows the executable to work by integrating the pre-compiled executable with the re-implemented windows operating system libraries, along with some system environment hand-waving, with the host operating system.

What you're asking is roughly the same as saying "I'd like to run an x86 compiled program on an ARM chip". It's a hardware difference -- the executable is compiled against a specific chipset. As such you'd have to simulate the CPU/hardware layer in addition to the operating system layer like wine does. Which is why I'd recommend an operating system inside of a VM.

And to be clear... anything is possible with software, but it's a lot harder than what wine is doing.

There are other options, like remoting into another machine (aka steambox or VNC) or display-over-a-network tricks on linux on a fast network. But really, getting a re-compiled binary or using a VM is probably your best option for a while.

Since you mentioned it, for the super old adventure games, there are things like scummVM that are possible avenues here too.

Keep an eye on places like good old games who have already embraced wine wrappers for older games. They have financial incentive to figure this out. If something OSS happens here they'll pick it up if they can.

Good luck, and if you find a good solution let us know. =)

The real reason is very simple: a 32 bit instruction will take up a full 64 bit instruction on a 64 bit OS. So every instruction used is taking up twice the space everywhere. In addition to support 32 bit applications you have to have in many instances a 32 bit version of the library needed as well as a 64 bit version. So two apps that use the same libraries but one is 32 bit and one is 64 bit, the 32 bit application can’t use the same library, even if the libraries are the same in functionality. If you extrapolate this, 32 bit apps potentially take up not just twice the disk space, but twice the memory to run. This doesn’t mean they necessarily run slower, but if you’re running against the limits of the memory you’re using 32 bit applications will make the problem even worse. There are even more issues, but this is a very basic representation of the problem.

See that doesn't seem so bad to me, since 32 bit apps are all old and small anyway.

Is there a reason it was designed this way? Is designing a 'universal' library impossible? Can the OS not be programmed to allow instructions of varying sizes?

If you are running a 64 bit app, can you not program 32 bit variables so save memory? That seems wasteful to have a 64 bit integer if you only need to count to ten.

No. Explaining this is beyond the scope of a forum reply, if you are going to judge it based on this and actually want to learn you need to go do the research. Variables do not apply on an instruction level, variables are for a programming level. Designing a universal library is totally possible, and it will be roughly double the size of the 64 bit library. So rather than force you to install an extra large library to support a tiny fraction of programs the libraries are typically divided to help the user. The problem is you’re thinking of this from a software perspective when the real problem is the hardware. 64 bit processors can only use 64 bit instructions. It doesn’t matter if the OS converts it for the processor the hardware still only takes 64 bit.