Thu, 23 Nov 2006
32-bit Galeon
I use an AMD64-based workstation, and from time to time I need to view data in proprietary formats, such as Flash. The Flash player is not available for Linux/AMD64, only for Linux/i386. The Flash plug-in is a shared library, so as a 32-bit object it can be used only with 32-bit executable, not with my 64-bit Galeon. I used to run flashplayer remotely from my laptop, but now I have decided I need it on my workstation as well.
Fortunately, there is a 32-bit version of Galeon in Fedora Extras. So I have installed it, and at a cost of keeping both 32-bit and 64-bit shared libraries in memory, it works, even with Flash plugin.
There was a problem, though: I use SCIM
(with Anthy)
for input of Japanese characters. It did not work with 32-bit Galeon.
I have looked into the Red Hat bugzilla, and found
bug #215583 there.
In the discussion, Jens Petersen recommends to use scim-bridge, which allows the input methods
to be run over the socket, in the separate address space. So it works even
when the input method runs on different architecture (AMD64 in my case)
than the main application (Galeon/i386) in my case. I just had to install both
32-bit and 64-bit scim-bridge-gtk modules, the
scim-bridge package, and set the GTK_IM_MODULE
environment variable to scim-bridge instead of scim.
So now I have both Japanese input method and Flash working in Galeon. Nevertheless, I hope there will be a full-featured and free Flash implementation soon.