nomultilib Desktop - any brave folks out there?

cz0

Hi, folks.
Recently I managed to get 64-bit version of legacy PCB CAD software to run on my computer giving me a chance to make an attempt to get rid of multilib.
I checked my /opt directory and it seems that there are no ELF32 binaries left on my system except libraries.
But I was slightly frighten by various discussions mentioning that it will be not easy to get multilib back if I ever need it.
My decade old Lenovo X230 seems to be to weak for any of this modern Steam or whatever games and, what is worth - I never seem to have time for this. Instead, I may occasionally run 64-bit WinXP VM in Virtual Box.
On the other hand, my system will benefit from 64-bit only set by reducing compilation time on aging hardware.
I wonder if there are any brave enough folks running pure 64-bit desktop and if there are any disadvantages for every-day use scenario in case system is used primitively for Internet surfing, programming and engineering using in-place compiled software.
Thank you.

pietinger · Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2024 11:44 am Post subject:

cz0,

yes I am using since many years the profile: PLASMA+NO-MULTILIB ... you will get with these steps from our developer @grknight:
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-8694188.html#8694188
(of course you must use 23.0 instead 17.1 ;-)

)

After this just do an "emerge -uUDvp @world".

Yes, the way back is very hard ... So you should be sure that you really don't need multilib.
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logrusx · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2018 Posts: 2400

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Banana · Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2024 2:53 pm Post subject:

I do run a no-multilib install for years as a daily workstation. But I did not switch, I used the no-multilib profile from the start.
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Zucca · Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2024 4:24 pm Post subject:

I use no-multilib everywhere except on boxes where I might install some binary distributed games (gog.com). On those same machines I make sure I use glibc as the system libc.
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logrusx · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2018 Posts: 2400

I think having -abi_x86_32 in make.conf will bring the 32bit enabled packages to minimum. For me it's 3 packages.

However I'm not sure how good of a practice that is. Before that it was 9 packages. Without it, portage wants to enable 32 bit abi on those six again. What I was able to find out it the profile enabled 32 bit abi on libomp and it brought it in for clang-runtime, compiler-rt and compiler-rt-sanitizers. The other two are virtual/libcrypt and libxcrypt.

I let it install the binary packages and everything seems to be fine.

However I don't think those will significantly decrease compilation time. Also there's the binhost.

Best Regards,
Georgi

pietinger · Posted: Fri Nov 08, 2024 6:49 pm Post subject:

logrusx,

the main reason for a no-multilib system is: You can now disable 32bit in the kernel ... and this is increasing kernel security!

See also KSPP: https://kspp.github.io/Recommended_Settings ->

logrusx · Advocate Joined: 22 Feb 2018 Posts: 2400

dmpogo · Advocate Joined: 02 Sep 2004 Posts: 3416 Location: Canada

And I use some legacy code for which I need to have gcc-3.3.6 tar ball (well libstdc++-v3 )

bstaletic · Guru Joined: 05 Apr 2014 Posts: 359

Last time I tried the no-multilib profile, I was fine for a while.
Then I realized that cross-arm-linux-gnueabihf toolchain couldn't be bootstrapped, because no-multilib lacks gnu/stubs-32.h
So, even though I only needed that toolchain for building some RPi projects, I had to go back to the multilib profile.

I don't know what that means for the kernel config. I'm playing safe and keeping 32bit support enabled.