Fedora 7: lib64 directories

[Jesse Keating]

On Thursday 07 June 2007 21:52:41 Shams wrote:
> I have installed Fedora 7 on a 64-bit cpu.
> I noticed that Fedora has both /usr/lib and /usr/lib64.
>
> 1. Is this only on Fedora or standard across many Linux distros?

Standard.

> 2. Technically why is this needed, can it be just  solved with having all
> the 64-bit libs in /usr/lib?

The libraries have the same file names, so to be able to support multilib 
(that is running either 32bit or 64bit content) you need to separate the 
32bit content from the 64bit content.

> 3. Also if I have a 64-bit cpu that is not capable of supporting IA32 will
> then only /usr/lib exist?

Erm, I'm not sure of any such CPU that we support in existence.  ia64 may be 
in that boat, but I can't remember if it uses /usr/lib64 as well.

> 4. Also does this mean that a lot of installed packages are still 32-bit?

Your installed packages are x86_64, although many copies of the 32bit packages 
may be installed as well for 32bit compatibility, so that if you need to run 
a piece of software that happens to be 32bit, it'll hopefully Just Work and 
you don't have to think about things like multilib.

-- 
Jesse Keating
Release Engineer: Fedora
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