I'd rather take the hit on performance (short of repeated machine crashes) than go through the hassles of running true 64 bit in a world where everything seems to be built for 32 bit kernels. I know about chroot and the ia32 libraries. . . but this is the computer I make my living with, and I don't have the time to deal with that if I can avoid it.

My current kernel is:
terrarium:/home/alizard# uname -a
Linux terrarium 2.6.18-3-amd64 #1 SMP Mon Dec 4 17:04:37 CET 2006 x86_64 GNU/Linux

• And... how do I get my computer to stop demanding the netinstall disk every time I install a package via aptitude?

• And finally, how do I get aptitude to stop trying to get rid of packages (like XORG!!!) it thinks are unused? I've had to reinstall xorg 3 times since I got Debian running 24 hours ago.

thanks

Not sure if you can "downgrade". Since it sounds like you're just starting (i.e. 24 hours ago), I'd be tempted to just reinstall with a 32-bit Etch. In fact, I run 32-bit Etch on my 64 bit machine (although I keep a 64-bit Sid around for fun).

As to the netinstall CD, try editing /etc/apt/sources.list with a text editor and comment out the line that has "cdrom:/" in it.

My working assumption is that in general, anything one can do in Fedora, one can probably do in Debian... and I know kernel changes are possible in Fedora. (though it's a bit scary the first time one sees "remove __________ kernel package").

I assume I'll need to change anything else that's "pure 64 bit" on this box, I'm hoping I can fix this with an aptitude upgrade command.

I'd really rather not reinstall if there's any way to avoid it. I just loaded 40G of /home directory data onto this box.

Though I'll do it if there is absolutely no other choice. . . I've got an article due Friday and I need to get this machine functioning NOW.

Thanks for the info on changing sources.list .

Do you have any free space to install Debian and then just use the same home partition you already loaded? You can mark during the install to use an existing /home and NOT format it (assuming it is on it's own partition). Or just change /etc/fstab after the install to point to your old /home and then remount /home.

As for the kernel. It's easy to install/remove kernels using aptitude. What I'm unsure of is the whole changing architecture from 64-bit to 32-bit because I assume all the packages on your system were compiled against a 64 bit system. My limited knowledge tells me this would be a lot like switching from PPC to x86, though maybe not that complicated. I'm pretty sure it should be the same in Fedora or anything else, in that the user space programs are the problem.

I know from unpleasant experience that Debian doesn't like to install into an "unclean" system (I tried to upgrade over an existing FC6 install - BTW, I did this because FC6 apparently will NOT work with video on a GeForce 6100 AM2 motherboard, Debian does)... maybe I should wipe and start over... but as I said, I'd REALLY rather avoid this... I'm hoping I can run some form of upgrade command to handle the change from 64 to 32 bit userland packages so I can do this in a few minutes instead of several hours.

How do I change kernels with aptitude? Simply:
aptitude install (kernelname)

BTW, is it safe to add sarge to my sources-list repository file so I can get sarge packages where etch packages don't exist yet?

Well, Debian doesn't like to install to a "mixed" system. Like it might upchuck if you go from Fedora to Etch because Fedora's /home partition probably has different versions of KDE/Gnome, etc and the config files are in slightly different format. But I would bet that going from 64-bit Etch to 32-Bit Etch would not be a big deal. I haven't ever tried this though...

I wouldn't add Sarge, as I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work. You could try apt-pinning to Sid though and install a few packages from unstable. Packages from Sarge will not be able to install because the old libraries won't install over the new ones. Now you could install Sarge and then apt-pin to Etch...

Yes that's how you install kernels. You can search for kernels at the command line by doing apt-cache search linux-image. These will all be 64 bit kernels though. When I search my 32-bit etch archives, there are no 64 bit kernels listed. I assume it's the same the other way around...

As I said, the problem is that the two are completely different architectures.

Here's something else to think about. The FHS directs 32-bit libraries be installed in */lib paths and 64-bit libraries in */lib64 paths. This is great on a multilib system like most distros that provide a 64-bit platform. I believe Debian puts 64-bit libraries in */lib with a symlink named */lib64.

I've read that Debian 64-bit is a pure 64-bit platform. I've also read that Debian uses */lib32 for 32-bit libraries, makig it a multilib platform. You can confirm by looking at your filesystem structure.

In any event, I suspect Debian 32-bit kernels are compiled for a system with 32-bit libraries in the */lib path. Since your Debian system has libraries using the 64-bit instruction set in the */lib path, things aren't going to work right.

That said, I'm curious what problems you've been having. Gentoo is multilib and I've had no problems there. My CLFS system is a pure 64-bit platform. Including the base system, I have over 300 packages installed. The only thing I had problems with was the Java precompiled binaries. These are apparently compiled on system with 64-bit libraries in */lib64, so I had to create a */lib64 symlink to */lib. I think that's messy on a pure system, but such is life.

You need to reinstall with a 32bit install disk.
Yes.
No your better off putting in sid then using apt pinning to make your default release etch/testing, you would need to use something like apt-get -t unstable install package.

I've reinstalled with a 32 bit disk, and all the problems I had with respect to aptitude trying to eat my Xserver have disappeared. Though I've learned to watch what it does before signing off on it. I'm now in the "moving into a new house" phase of changing over to a new platform. The stuff I've got running is running like it did on the old motherboard, just a lot faster.

I've also found out that Debian is NOT for the inexperienced.

Here's a good debian site that has a lot of information. It's tailored toward command line stuff and doesn't address the desktop at all, but I've found it very helpful in setting up my machine over the years.

The biggest trouble I had getting this set up is buildng a workable sources.list file with enough repos to get me access to the software I need to get this machine up. I've got one I think is workable now.