| From: John Jason Jordan <***@comcast.net>
| No, Debian does much the same as Fedora and other 64-bit distros, just
| not as well. That is, a Debian distro maintains two sets of libraries.
| The problem is that sometimes you can't just grab the regular 32-bit
| library and put it into the 32-bit library folder. There are occasional
| problems with compatibility. Also, from what you say, Debian does the
| folders backwards -- 64-bit libs are in /lib and 32-bit libs are
| in /lib32. In theory this shouldn't make any difference. In practice,
| it sometimes does.
Ah. I see the problem. Normal 32-bit apps and libraries (if they
"know" the library directories) won't work.
The Debian way is more pure (native arch owns "lib" directories,
others archs must get out of the way), but less practical (x86-64 was
meant to coexist with i386, so it is easy for it to start off with
lib64).
An argument could be made that each library directory should have a
name that includes the arch so that all arches could coexist (say, on
an NFS-mounted filesystem meant to support a bunch of arches).
| I have 32-bit Adobe Reader, 32-bit
| RealPlayer, 32-bit Opera, and 32-bit Java. The first three I installed
| with --force-architecture. The latter was in the Ubuntu amd64
| repositories.
I detest the use of force :-) Seriously: I hate second-guessing a
distro.
I forgot that I sometimes use Adobe Acrobat Reader, another 32-bit
only application.
| > - for the longest time, OpenOffice only came in 32-bit form. No
| > longer true.
|
| I hear conflicting stories about this. The most credible story that I
| have heard for Ubuntu Edgy amd64 is that OOo is 32-bit and Ubuntu wrote
| ia32-lib-openoffice to make it work.
I'm just parroting what I heard. So I could be wrong.
Some parts of OO require Java now, I think. Red Hat has worked very
hard to get gcj up to the level where it can be used in place of Sun's
Java for this task. Java did not come in x86-64 until recently (and
there is no x86-64 Java plug-in for browsers). Again, this is not
firsthand knowledge.
| On my Ubuntu amd64 Edgy R3240 I have had flash installed in 64-bit
| Firefox, along with all the rest of the plugins that the medial kiddies
| want.
I wonder how that worked. But not enough to figure it out :-)
| After a bit I took out the flash plugin because it was too
| annoying. However, since Flash 32 was installed, it continued to run in
| Opera. That's perfect -- Firefox is what I normally use and I don't
| want Flash. If I do want to go to Youtube or someplace like that, then
| I launch Opera.
That sounds more convenient than my setup, but for a silly little
reason. Whenever you have a firefox running, any attempt to run
another version, or mozilla, will just get you another window running
under the original firefox. So I have to leave my x86-64 firefox to
run my i386 version. Grrr.
The most annoying version of this problem is that I cannot even fire
up firefox on a remote machine with the display on my local X server
if I already have it running locally. I may want to access resources
on the far machine (files, bookmarks, rights to university library resources)
that just cannot be reached by the local firefox. Grrr.
| I have never gotten mplayer to work worth a damn on 64-bit
| Ubuntu-anything. But I don't really care because I have no use for it.
| I use Totem to view movies (works perfectly) and RealPlayer for audio
| files, including web streams. I don't care to bother viewing video over
| the web.
I use mplayer on my Fedora x86-64 box to watch stuff from my Myth TV
box (another machine). I've also used mplayer for this on 32-bit Ubuntu.
| > I'll go look at Feisty.
| > What's with the name? Should it not be Feisty
| > Something-that-begins-with-F?
|
| You can get it here:
|
| http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/feisty/herd-5/
Ahh. Now I see that this is a test release. The real thing, to be
released next month, will be called Feisty Fawn.
I will probably wait until the official release.
| Download the torrent. I have completed the full download and am seeding
| it back, so I know you will get at least one peer.
My ISP is well known for "traffic shaping" torrent down to dialup
speeds :-(. They don't give a reason (or even admit doing it) but I
think that they would say that all torrent users are pirates. Not me.