What has happened to ia32?

[dep]

So I've spent this very eventful week upgrading my 10.04LTS to 12.04LTS. My Textmaker and a few other apps wouldn't run and it made me crazy trying to figure out why. Then, just now, it hit me [sound effect of slapping own head]: the ia32 libs hadn't gotten installed. So I checked and sure enough, they hadn't. No prob -- 'sudo apt-get install ia32-libs' -- only now it's downloading 239 packages!

What has happened here? Does the 32-bit translation layer now require 234 megs of additional software? Or is my system destroying itself before my eyes?

[oshunluvr]

I'm no expert in this area, but one of the big changes fro 10.04 to 12.04 is the addition of "multiarch" support. A lot of 32 bit libraries are available to a 64 bit install. I suspect you're installing a good number of them along with ia32.

If this worries you, you could take the time to see which specific packages you need for each of your non-kubuntu apps. However, I think the only bad thing you might be doing by allowing everything to install is wasting a little drive space.

I wouldn't worry about it unless you're very short of free space.

[dep]

Thanks very much

They've all come down and installed and things are working again. Actually, was happy with 10.04, but a recent Firefox upgrade kept blowing up do to some glx pixbuf issue, so I thought that 10.04 was probably getting a little long in the tooth and might be worth the upgrade, which is always moderately hellish. You'll be perhaps amused, perhaps surprised to know that Firefox still blows up with the same error.

And next week I'll have been using Linux exclusively for 15 years. On July 1, KDE for 15 years.

Lord. I should have expected vast and largely inexplicable changes!

Thanks again.

[oshunluvr]

You'll be perhaps amused, perhaps surprised to know that Firefox still blows up with the same error.

Typical, right?

I doubt I can help you with this one as I've switched to a version of Chromium for my browesr. SRWare Iron to be specific. The error could be related to GLX so check your video driver. You're probably going to have to go to the Mozilla forums for this one.

Chrome-based browsers take a bit of getting used to coming from Mozilla-type browsers, but now I love it.

[GreyGeek]

Hey, Dep, you beat me by six months!
I began using Linux with RH 5.0 in May of 1998, and switched to SuSE 5.3 in Sept of 1998 because it had KDE 1.0 Beta. Like you, I've been using KDE every since. I'm now running Kubuntu 12.04.1 with KDE 4.9.4 and will remain with 12.04 until it expires in 2017, or I expire, which ever comes first. IMO, and experience, KDE has been the BEST, MOST POWERFUL, flexible and easiest to use desktop since KDE ver 1.0 went gold.