Install 32 bit packages on 64 bit system
From MEPIS Documentation Wiki
The information in this article pertains to 64 bit version of SimplyMEPIS
Some software is not available in 64 bit variant, to install a 32 bit package use this command:
dpkg --force-architecture -i packagename.deb
Some programs can work when installed like this, however if the program depends on some 32 bit libraries this command is not sufficient. Do a search in Synaptic for ia32 and install all the packages you can find, install also libc6-i386 package. This however might not solve the problem completely, to find out which libraries are still missing use this command:
ldd /usr/bin/programname
Look in the output for something like:
libdbus-1.so.3 => not found
(If you get "not a dynamic executable" see the last paragraph of this article)
For MEPIS 6.x-- If some libraries are missing search for them at: packages.ubuntu.com, using the "Search the contents of packages" search box. (Search for Dapper version for MEPIS 6.x)
For MEPIS 7.0 and MEPIS 8.0 -- Search for missing libraries at: www.debian.org/distrib/packages, using the "Search the contents of packages" search box." (Search for "stable" packages for MEPIS 7 and "testing" for MEPIS 8)
If you find a package for 64 bit as in this example install that package from 64 bit repos (using Synaptic or apt-get), however if you don't find a 64 bit package that contains that library, download the i386 package and unzip it with this command:
dpkg-deb -x packagename.deb ~/Desktop/unpacked
That will create an unpacked folder on your Desktop with the content of the .deb file. Go down the path to ~/Desktop/unpacked/usr/lib and copy the files from that directory to the /lib32 directory. Run again the ldd command to make sure that all the libraries needed are installed.
Attention: sometimes /usr/bin/programname is only a symlink or a launching script, you need to look for the actual binary program file, for example in case of Opera (this is only presented only as an example, Opera does have a 64 bit package) that is in /usr/lib/opera/9.22-20070716.6/opera and you can find that if you examine the /usr/bin/opera script. In this case you need to run the ldd command like this:
ldd /usr/lib/opera/9.22-20070716.6/opera
