I’m installing packages from Yast->Development->Base Development and I noticed about 5% of them yast picked their 32 bit versions. The rest it picked 64 bit versions. It is possible to to recheck the 64 bit version during the install. It’s just the fact that yast picked 32 bit for some of them by default which is annoying. This is the first time I checked what versions yast installs. So I wonder if it’s done the same in the past when installing software. Is there a way to tell yast not to install 32 bit packages or at least have it give me a warning? Checking an ass load of packages can be tedious. Is there a way to tell yast to tell me what 32 bit packages are currently installed? I’m looking for a way to make sure all the software on my system stays 64 bit and I don’t want to have to check each package individually to do this.
openSUSE is a hybrid distribution, which is a big plus because the 32-bit libraries are available and will run even though the kernel is 64-bit. Some programs need this to work properly, some programs are still only avail as 32-bit, and some are preferable to use as 32-bit over 64-bit because of limitations with the latter version. I would only be concerned about 32-bit code being pulled in if it were being done by mistake. fwiw, I’ve been using 64-bit on this distro since the beginning, and I’ve never had 32-bit installed when it shouldn’t have been. I would verify that what is being selected is not actually required; YaST doesn’t arbitrarily choose a 32-bit alternative for no reason.