| From: JT Moree <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>

| There's constant complaining everywhere that 32bit apps aren't supported
| under 64bit distros.

Fedora has supported 32-bit applications on their 64-bit distro all
along.  That's what I've used since I got the machine (2.5 years ago).
I also run it on my 64-bit desktops.

The major difficulty in getting 32- and 64-bit to live together is
that you need to have two version of libraries that are going to be
used in both worlds.  Fedora puts 64-bit libraries in /lib64,
/usr/lib64 etc.  and 32-bit libraries remain in /lib, /usr/lib etc.
This works well.

The cost is that you need a lot of libraries in each form.  And there
are some small infelicities.  For example, a 32-bit and 64-bit package
may share a config file and rpm is concerned by the differing
timestamps (the actual content is identical).

My understanding was that the Debian way of running 32-bit stuff on a
64-bit machine is to create a chroot 32-bit world.  It sounds awkward.
Perhaps things have been improved.

Do I exploit Fedora's capability to run 32-bit stuff?  Only in a few
cases, but some have been important.

- for the longest time, OpenOffice only came in 32-bit form.  No
  longer true.

- I have a 32-bit firefox in which to run the Flash plugin.  But
  almost all the time I use the 64-bit Firefox, without Flash.
  (There are a lot of packages that depend on the 64-bit firefox
  so I don't think that I could simply replace it with the 32-bit
  one.)

- Mplayer needs to be 32-bit to run the 32-bit codecs.  I don't
  actually know whether I'm using them.  Mplayer and codecs are
  a bit of a mystery to me.

(I run Ubuntu 6.06 on my 32-bit subnotebook.  I'll go look at Feisty.  
What's with the name?  Should it not be Feisty 
Something-that-begins-with-F?)
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