32bit multimedia software on 64bit Linux?

[Florin Andrei]

One thing that kept me from using 64 bit Linux was multimedia.

In order to play certain proprietary media formats, one method was to 
use Xine or Mplayer and drop a collection of Windows DLLs (codecs) in 
/usr/lib/win32 which Xine/Mplayer were able to use to decode those formats.
Obviously, that won't work on a 64 bit Linux OS - in that case, one 
technique that I've seen was to install the 32 bit versions of Xine or 
Mplayer, along with all the 32 bit libraries needed by those 
applications, then use the 32 bit versions of the players, along with 
the Win32 codecs, to play the proprietary formats.

Also, 64 bit Flash is still not available. I've seen the same technique 
used to work around this problem: install 32 bit Firefox along with all 
the necessary 32 bit libraries, then install the 32 bit Flash.

I just tested 32 bit Ubuntu 7.04 on an AMD64 system and it works fine, 
including multimedia. If I install the 64 bit version instead of the 
current one, what do I have to do to make sure I'll be able to play all 
the multimedia content that the current 32 bit OS is able to play? It's 
mostly 3 types of content that I'm worried about:

1. Proprietary media files such as WMV, QuickTime, Real Video
2. Flash
3. Java applets (OK, this is not strictly "multimedia" but it matters to 
me and it's in the same 32-vs-64 bit conundrum)

I think there is a 64 bit version of Java that might work fine (although 
I never tried it until now), but I'm not sure about #1 and #2.

-- 
Florin Andrei

http://florin.myip.org/