[Lula] Fedora multiarch

[Dan Kegel]

On Dec 6, 2007 9:28 PM, Joe Bayes <jbayes at spoo.mminternet.com> wrote:
> When I installed Fedora 8, many packages were installed as both an i386
> and an x86_64 version:
>
> 1) Why does Fedora install packages for both architectures? I
> understand that perhaps some i386 packages are installed to satisfy
> dependencies of other packages that are only available on i386, but
> many of these packages aren't dependencies for any other installed
> package.

I can imagine there's a "base" package they figure everybody will need?

> 2) Will I break something if I remove the i386 version of packages for
> which the x86_64 version is also installed, and which aren't required
> for any dependencies? (I don't mind the extra disk space, but I'd like
> to avoid having to download BOTH copies of Firefox every time they
> push an update.)

Just run the 32 bit Firefox, forget the 64 bit one, that's my advice :-)

In fact, are you sure you need 64 bits for anything?  Maybe
you can get away with just installing the 32 bit OS.  At work,
all our workstations are running 32 bit linux userspace but
have the 64 bit kernel installed; that gives us the best of
both worlds (at the expense of confusing "./configure; make" for a lot
of packages).

> 3) Some files are owned by both versions of the package:
>
> spoo:~$ rpm -qf /usr/bin/artsd
> arts-1.5.8-4.fc8.x86_64
> arts-1.5.8-4.fc8.i386
> spoo:~$
>
> So, is /usr/bin/artsd x86_64 code, or i386 code?

The command
  file /usr/bin/artsd
will tell you.
- Dan