upgrading from x86_64 to x86?

English Install/Boot/Login
1

According to some comments on the new openSUSE 11.0, there is still a problem with playing java applets in the 64 bit Firefox. For me this is essential. So I thought of going from a 64 bit back to a 32 bit system. Is this possible?

2

So why not run the 32-bit version of firefox? It can be run on a 64-bit opensuse install.

3

I agree with icorson…no need to change out your entire installation. Just download the 32 bit version of firefox and any other 32 bit application you may need. Put them in their own directory and just reference that. That way you don’t destroy everything you already have configured and installed.

Cheers

4

You cannot switch architectures without reinstalling. However, as already posted, that is not necessary at all. Just install 32-bit Firefox and 32-bit Java including the plugin.

5

Yes, that’s a possibility, but then you must always avoid that during an update it get replaced by the 64 bit version. I had the problem with the javaplugin. I had a java plugin and java version which worked fine but one day was overwritten by the update process. So in order to avoid these kind of problems I thought to install a whole 32-bit version.

6

If that actually happened by an update, AFAIK it was not intentional. A package will always stay on its architecture unless manually replaced. In all the years I’ve used SuSE, on many machines, I have never seen that happen. Of course, if you are still concerned, you can do as @krypticos suggests, install FF separately from the package repository - then updates will not see it at all.

7

Well, the problem was with the Java. SUSE installed version 5.x.x, but I installed a version 6 directly from Sun. This worked fine with Firefox. But I had always to eliminate the updating of the plugin on YOU. One day it had slipped through and I had to reset things by hand.

Thanks for the comments. I think this may close the discussion.

8

That happened to me, too. I had x86 Firefox 2.x installed from an openSUSE package on x86_64 openSUSE 10.3. When I upgraded to openSUSE 11.0, x86 Firefox 2.x was replaced by x86_64 Firefox 3.0.