Fighting the i386 plague

[alan]

On Mon, 22 Jan 2007, David Nielsen wrote:

> man, 22 01 2007 kl. 16:20 -0500, skrev Jesse Keating:
>> On Monday 22 January 2007 16:09, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
>>> Can anybody tell me why it wants to pull in the i386 version of
>>> gutenprint to replace the x86_64 version of gimp-print-utils?  Is there
>>> any way to convince it not to do things like that?
>>
>> By default, if you ask yum to install <package>  and <package>.i386 +
>> <package>.x86_64 are available, you'll get them both.  (same for other
>> arches, like ppc/ppc64)  This is so that multilib Just Works and you don't
>> have to think about it.  Those that DO think about it and concienciously
>> decide to NOT use that feature of their processor can add "exclude=*.i?86"
>> to /etc/yum.conf, as well as yum remove \*.i?86.
>
> I seem to remember mentions that this specific solution to the multilib
> disaster would cause problems by removing needed packages. Any truth to
> that?

For anyone using anything linked as 32bit, yes.

A while back I tried removing the 32bit stuff and was left with a 
non-working system.  I am not certain what is linked against the 32bit 
libraries in the default distribution.  (I can check my laptop, but that 
is at home.)  OpenOffice used to be 32bit only, but I believe they fixed 
that.  Things like Acroread and similar binary only will need the 
libraries, as well.  (People tend to use more than just the things 
installed with the distro.)

At some point, I will have to do a check of what uses the 32bit libraries 
on a 64-bit install.  Hopefully not much, but you never know...

-- 
"Invoking the supernatural can explain anything, and hence explains nothing."
                   - University of Utah bioengineering professor Gregory Clark