On 4 Mar 2010, at 07:19, Nikos Chantziaras wrote:
On 03/04/2010 08:44 AM, Graham Murray wrote:
Volker Armin Hemmann<volkerar...@googlemail.com> writes:
no, it is not safe to have a 64bit only system. Just choose the
multilib
profile and start installing. If something needs the 32bit emul
libs, it will
pull the stuff in. There is nothing you need to care about.
What is unsafe about a 64bit only system? Surely if it were unsafe
then
Gentoo would not offer no-multilib profiles? I have recently built 2
systems using a no-multilib profile and have not found any
problems, and
expect to start building a third one today.
You didn't understand the question Volker was replying to. The
question was not about "safe" as in "security", but rather "safe" as
in "I can rest assured that a no-multilib system can run every
software I could install", which is clearly not the case since some
applications need 32-bit support.
I could imagine that web-browsers might need 32-bit support in order
to play Flash, but can you suggest other applications which might?
This is a headless server, and I was kinda reassured by Alan's
response (Wed, 3 Mar 2010 22:04:17 +0200) [1] that seemed to assure me
that a statically linked 32-bit binary would work fine if I selected
the "no-multilib" profile.
I'd be really quite happy if I knew that this decision was revocable -
if I could choose "no-multilib" now and change my mind using eselect
later. Presumably I can choose to keep these 32-bit libs for the
moment & blow them away if I find I don't need them - this lib32 is,
after all, in the stage3-amd64-*tar.bz2, so what is the point in
offering me "no-multilib" if I can't do that?
Stroller.
[1]
http://archives.gentoo.org/gentoo-user/msg_64a30b77742cf5846705952e6129367d.xml
http://tinyurl.com/ykvx5co
