On 12/08/2021 20.31, L A Walsh wrote:
I noticed a bunch of 32bit packages that often get installed when there is an identically named package but without the -32bit- in the name.
What's the difference between the ones that say -32bit- vs. not, and why is a 64bit installation preferring the -32bit- variant of the package.
The -32bit packages are for use by 32 bit applications running in a 64 bit environment. For example, the proprietary acroread package (which will fail for other reasons, but it is the one I remember). So acroread may depend on foosomething-32bit.rpm, but nothing else needs foosomething.rpm so it is not installed.
For fun, I installed the 64bit package of the same name and removed the -32bit- package and found no dependency errors.
My guess: because it was a recommended package, not a depended upon package.
If I want an 'pure' x64 installation, should I just go through my rpm-db and remove all the ones with -32bit- added to the names and replace them with the non-32bit variation? Of NOTE: the -32bit- named packages are NOT the same as packages with the arch=i586. We are talking about all arch x86_64.
If I D/l distro files locally, it seems I'm now downloading 2 versions of about 60% of the packages -- ones that I don't need and seem to slow things down (as far as rpm-operations, of which I seem to be doing quite a few lately).
You probably installed one such 32 bit application (or more) which pulls the 32bit stack in. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from oS Leap 15.2 x86_64 (Minas Tirith))