Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-amd64 (194 mails)

["Matt T." <Matt@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Saturday 30 April 2005 06:46, Colin Carter wrote:
> Thanks to Matt...
>
> On Saturday 30 April 2005 00:43, Matt T. wrote:
> > On Friday 29 April 2005 09:50, Colin Carter wrote:
> > > On Friday 29 April 2005 01:28, R Kimber wrote:
[snip]
> > > > - Richard
> > >
> > > Richard,
> > > What do you mean by mixed" Vs "Fully 64" ?
> > > I noted that you said most people have the mixed system.
> >
> > Not all applications are 64 bit. Some are 32 bit only. You therefore have
> > a 32 bit version and a 64 bit version of most libs. One is in lib, such
> > as /usr/lib, the other in /usr/lib64. This is the correct way to do it,
> > according to the defined standards
> >
> > > I installed the SuSE 64 bit system and just assumed that it is fully 64
> > > bit.
> >
> > No, it is not fully 32 bit. Some apps are 32 bit. Just one example, java
> > 1.4.x is 32 bit.
> >
> > This is not SuSEs fault or a bug. It is perfectly OK to run 32 bit apps
> > on a 64 bit system, this is one of the features of this specific 64 bit
> > architecture. Proprietary apps, without sourcecode and therefore only
> > available as 32 bit version, can be used on a 64 bit AMD64 Linux system
> > without problems.
> >
> > > Am I being naive?  Perhaps it is the cause of half of my SuSE
> > > problems!
> >
> > May be, and may be not. Bugs can be everywhere.
> >
> > > Regards,
> > > Colin
> >
> > HTH,
> > Matt
>
> Thank you Matt.
> Sorry to bother you again, but an obvious extension to this question is:
> Does this mean that I can safely use rpm to install a 32 bit application
> onto my "64 bit" system?  Say from the same SuSE disks?

Yes. Use yast to install the software, and you should be save anyway. Apt 
should be fine too. 

You can see in the rpm name if it is 64 bit, then usually it has x86_64 in the 
filename somewhere.

> And, if I read you correctly, some of those programs automatically
> installed during system set-up would have been 32 bit?

yes.

look in /lib and /usr/lib, all that stuff is 32 bit.

The 64 bit stuff is in /lib64 and /usr/lib64

Many libs are installed as both a 32 bit and a 64 bit version, so you can run 
either 64 bit or 32 bit apps using them.

The kernel and its modules is of course pure 64 bit. Here a mix is not used.

Regards,
Matt

>
> Regards,
> Colin