Debian install - Step 5

Enable i386 arch

To install 32bit packages on 64 bit systems (e.g. Google earth and Skype, which are not provided in 64 bit versions for Linux), you will need to allow 32 bit packages to be installed on your 64 bit system - and with Debian this is called "multiarch".

From 7.0, Debian supports simultaneous running of i386 and amd64 binaries.

sudo dpkg --add-architecture i386 && sudo apt update  

Note: after enabling another architecture, you may have to specify from then on which arch to retrieve and install packages from, like this

apt install -a amd64

or set the preference for your architecture with editing the apt.conf file

sudo geany /etc/apt/apt.conf  

and add a line like this

APT::Architecture="amd64";  

save it and apt install will retrieve from amd64 packages

If at any time you need to be done with i386 (or any other arch), use this command:

sudo dpkg --remove-architecture i386  

But you will need to remove all the packages installed from that arch first, if that's possible, or really wanted.
Trying to remove an arch while still having packages installed from it, will return an error like this one:

"dpkg: error: cannot remove architecture 'i386' currently in use by the database"

To find out what packages are installed from an arch, run

dpkg --get-selections | grep i386 | awk '{print $1}'  

And remove them with,

sudo apt remove --purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep i386 | awk '{print $1}'`  

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Google Earth

Downlaod from earth/download/...
cd to Downloads and install G-earth

sudo dpkg -i googleearth*.deb  

for i386, a dependency lsb-core is needed, for amd64 platform the package install ends with errors:

googleearth depends on libfreeimage3 ... lsb-core ... ia32-libs-gtk

Sort it out with:

sudo apt -f install  

The following NEW packages will be installed:
<a huge heap of i386 packages>
Need to get 56.9 MB of archives. After this operation, 171 MB of additional disk space will be used Enter y

In Debian Jessie, ia32-libs does not exist, and Google earth still depends on it (they say this has changed in sid), so if you hit this problem you can install a dummy i32-libs package from here http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=111898

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Skype

Requires multiarch enabled (see top).

Download skype from their page and install it

sudo dpkg -i skype-debian*.deb sudo apt -f install  

(a fair few i386 packages will be installed)




Next pages:

LXDE fast install   Configure Debian