[IDEA] Ability to install 32bit apps on 64bit version...

[viciouslime]

The ability to install 32bit deb files on 64bit system would make life that little bit easier. It is already possible to install things like firefox through simple64, but it would be better if ubuntu could do this without any third party apps.

[PriceChild]

Its pretty easy to create a chroot in order to run 32bit apps, there are plenty of howtos on the forum. In my opinion its probably a better idea to inform users on what packages are not available for the 64bit platform before they install Ubuntu. It is possible to browse packages.ubuntu.com to see what you can download things for but there's no real list.

I wonder what the other FAs think.

[.t.]

Multiarch support has been planned for a long time in Ubuntu. Unfortunately, it's not a particularly high priority as most open source software can be compiled on more than one architechture. The problem only really arises when we encounter closed source software, which isn't really in the spirit of Ubuntu; although admittedly in some cases it is inevitable. You will have to bug the independent vendors to provide support for your architecture and operating system; there's not much that we can do, except the support that you succinctly described. Here is the wikipage that describes the implementation: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityEdgyIdeas/Multiarch

[salsafyren]

Multiarch is on the roadmap for Debian Lenny:

http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/dpkg/trunk/TODO?op=file