32-bit Firefox on x86_64 (FC5)...
 

Hi all.

I just installed FC5 (x86_64) on my Turion64 laptop. So far, so good; however, as everybody has probably noticed, you don't get far on the Internet these days without a Macromedia Flash plugin. As Macromedia hasn't gotten on the schtick yet and released a 64-bit plugin, I will be forced to run the 32-bit Firefox, which is not included by default in 64-bit FC5.

On my old FC4 install, I achieved this simply by downloading the "stock" 32-bit Firefox from http://www.getfirefox.com/ (the main reason being that I wanted to use Firefox 1.5 but there were no FC4 RPMS available at the time). That got the job done, but lacked some integration with GNOME that the Fedora-provided RPMS had.

Thus, I would like to use the Fedora-supplied 32-bit Firefox for FC5. I followed the suggestion on this post in order to setup a Yum repository, replacing the "4" with a "5" obviously where necessary. I then executed . It looks like it will go through; however, it also wants to install some other i386 libs along with it...

So, my questions are...

1a. This didn't say anything about removing the existing (64-bit) Firefox. So, when I click my Firefox icon in GNOME, how is it going to know which version to run?

1b. Should I just simplify things and remove the 64-bit Firefox?

2. It wants to install i386 versions of libs which undoubtedly already exist on my machine in x86_64 variants. Can these libs coexist with the 64-bit libs? In other words, will the applications that are already happy using the 64-bit libs continue to use the 64-bit libs, or will they prefer the 32-bit libs?

Thanks!

Answers 1a; the i386 version will run, see answer 1b
Answer 1b; that's a good idea, see answer 1a

Answer 2;
This is normal nothing to fret about, many of us are running mixed mode environments (both 32-bit and 64-bit applications) with out a problem. Yes, the 32-bit libs can and do coexist with the 64-bit counterparts. The 64-bit applications will use the 64-bit libs, the 32-bit applications will use the 32-bit libs, cannot run 64-bit or 32-bit applications without the required libs.

My head almost crashed after reading that. ;)

Thanks for the responses; I'll go ahead and go through with the original plan and remove the 64-bit Firefox.

Glad you enjoyed it......

I just had to do it!!!!!!

FYI: when you get around to installing mplayer install the 32-bit version, some (OK most of) the codec plugins do not work with the 64-bit version (wma comes to mind).

hey guys! ive been trying to install 32-bit firefox on my 64-bit system, and i can get as far as downloading the packages, but then i get loads of errors:

im a linux newbie, so any help you can give would be much appreciated

oh and if your interested heres the packages it tried to install:

Hmmmmm......... it seems that some FC5 rpms are installed...........

And the firefox version your trying to install is for FC4 just like the gnome and xorg-xll-libs packages listed above.

So I suspect that you have FC4 installed correct???

Check; cat /etc/*release

First thing first, please bring your installation current follow the instructions here;

http://www.fedorafaq.org/fc4/#installsoftware

When done with the yum update plase do

yum update

Next you need to get the matching 32-bit versions of the gnome-keyring, libbonoboui, libgnome and libgnomeui rpm packages from FC5 and install them along with any required dependencies. Install the updated xorg-x11-libs rpm by typing something like;

yum install xorg-x11-libs-6.8.2-37.FC4.49.2.1.i386

Then if you want;

yum install firefox-1.0.8-1.1.fc4.i386

If possible build the latest firefox-1.5.0.6 32-bit rpm package (maybe a friend can help???), I posted info on how to do this here;

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=469137

kk thanks for the help, id be lost without these forums ^^

I've got the same problem as croco, and I'm running FC5 on an x86_64 machine.

I've followed this tutorial and all the others I can find on-line. None of them have sucessfully allowed me to install i386 Firefox.

Can it be installed by just downloading the binary *.tar.gz from Mozilla's site?

Thanks,

Yes but it is not quite that simple, a little extra work is required....

The libstdc++.so.5 32-bit lib file is needed for the 32-bit version to work, it is part of the compat-libstdc++-33-3.2.3-55.fc5.i386.rpm package and this needs the 64-bit counterpart in order to be used properly on a 64-bit OS. Both of these packages can be installed at the same time by typing something like; rpm -Uvh compat*.rpm

Then you can extract firefox tar.qz file into your home directory. You will have to create/edit your own link for this to be present on the GUI menu.

For additional insite see; http://stanton-finley.net/mediawiki/...allation_Notes

Works pretty good
 

I run the site at retrovision.tv and I'm using a couple of athlon x2 computers to do encoding, so I didn't want to kill mplayer by installing it in 32 bit, also the vlc plugin has a hemmorage unless it's 32 bit too.

Running 32-bit apps gets to be a hassle and that you might as well have installed 32-bit linux by the time you screw things up by dual librarying everything. I think Stanton Finley sorta says this less forcefully too.

So, because I'm running a TV site, and wanted to take advantage of the 64 bit OS, I figured out something that works pretty slick. I just use windows firefox and wine. This gives you windows java and flash the MediaPlayerConnectivity plugin will launch vlc or mplayer (also wine installed).

This is kind of a screwy solution, but on athlon 64 computers, you won't notice the emulation, and it keeps your libraries from getting weird.

After all, it's just a browser.

One way is "yum install wine" and the other is messing around for a couple hours and wishing you hadn't.

It is not hard to get the 32-bit version firefox working on a a 64-bit system, most Red Hat based distro's load the 32 libs needed along with 64-bit libs. I have the RHEL5beta1 installed (with updates) on both 32 and 64 bit systems. Both have the latest 32-bit versions of firefox, mplayer along with the mplayerplug-in, Adobe, flashplayer (the new flash 9 beta which is not quite right yet), the latest jre and other plugins installed and working without any problems. In fact while the jre is 32-bit it is installed along with the latest 64-bit jdk.

Red Hat isn't free software. It is nice to know that if you pay, they made it happy. I found out (and I have gotten it working) that so little of the 64 bit OS remained to make the browser work, that I should have installed 32 bit.

Hey Guys I just got the same error as of you but then I remembered I madde the base-i386.repo file in /etc/yum.repos.d/.. and there was the problem because in the file theres something like:
so it will install the FC4 program´s..
now just type
in root and edit 4 to 5 and youre done.. I hope...

..I haven tried it yet because FF1.5 x86_64 still working while typing this :P
so Lets try:)

no succes
 

getting back on my own post:

still getting some transaction check errors, here it is..
there everything looked fine for a moment but then...
looks like some are already installed half?

or is it because i'm still in gnome? hmm... I will come back on that..

Grtzz DM

I still get the error and can't find anything to work I will try the wine emulation maybe then I get some success;)

Grtzz DM