Multilib in FC7? Disable by default?

dragoran dragoran at feuerpokemon.de
Sun Aug 20 17:13:27 UTC 2006


Gilboa Davara wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I've got a simple question that I'd like to table for discussion.
> Current -devel tree seems to suggest that FC6 multilib FC6 has almost
> doubled in size (from ~13% of the total package count in FC4/5 to ~24%
> in the current devel tree)
> On the other hand, FC6 is about to include native 64bit OO and gcj (with
> browser support) builds, lowering the need for the default i386 support,
> as only Wine/Extra actually -requires- multilib support to run.
> More-ever, I'd venture to guess that most x86_64 installation will most
> likely be used to run native 64bit services and application - mostly on
> servers and workstation - lowering the need for multilib even further.
> (You won't run 32bit flash on your brand new 32 cores server... let
> alone that fact that flash/win32codecs are not supported by Fedora.)
>
> My question is simple: why not add an installation option to disable
> multilib support completely.
>
> Mind you, I use my workstation to run 32bit software and games... but I
> rather disable multilib completely and create a small, specialized
> 'stupid' i386 chroot (no DE, no user-applications; only a basic set of
> i386  libraries and UI toolkits) and use it to run i386 applications in
> a confined space. (Xen/i386 might be an interesting option - though it
> won't be able to run hardware GL applications which I need... ;))
>
> - Gilboa
>
>   

Sorry but I have to disagree here, the x86_64 arch is able to nativly 
run 32bit and 64bit software, so supporting multilib is using a feature 
of the hardware and there are many 32bit only apps out there and this 
also wont change in the near feature. If you don't need the 32bit libs 
you can simply remove all i386/i686 rpms (yum remove glibc.i686 should 
do it).




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