At one time there were comments that not all packages were available on
amd64. Even today that can be true, especially for some third party
stuff. To wit, a prominent manufacturer of amateur radio equipment
offers utilities for its hardware for Linux in addition to the other
two, but the Linux version is 32 bit only and is dynamically linked to
32 bit libraries. Requests for amd64/x86_64 versions have been ignored
as have requests for armhf.

A recent email thread blamed "Linux" for making this so hard because
multi-arch must be enabled. I noted that if the manufacturer would also
provide 64 bit versions of their utilities that this pain would be
avoided. Curiously, there was no reply to that fact. It should have
been noted that choosing a distribution with multi-arch enabled out of
the box, such as Ubuntu, would make installation no more painful than on
Windows 64. To date the manufacturer's Web site states that 32 bit
compatibility libraries are required. Some users may make the choice to
simply install a 32 bit distribution as a result.

My suggestion, and solution, is to spin up a 32 bit VM to run the
utilities for the odd time that I need them.

- Nate

--

"The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all
possible worlds. The pessimist fears this is true."

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