I’ve been finding lots of .deb packages that are compiled for 32-bit OS’s that don’t have 64-bit versions available. While this may not be the most elegant solution, it’s been allowing me to install things like Adobe AIR and DiffMerge, which don’t have 64-bit .deb packages:
First, navigate to the location of the .deb folder.
Once there do the following:
1) Make a tmp directory to hold the package
$ mkdir tmp
2) Extract the .deb package into the tmp directory
$ dpkg-deb -x package.deb tmp
3) Extract the control files
$ dpkg-deb –control package.deb tmp/DEBIAN
4) Change the Architecture parameter from “i386″ to “all”
$ sed -i “s/i386/all/” tmp/DEBIAN/control
5) Repackage the .deb into your new 64-bit version
$ dpkg -b tmp package_64.deb
6) Install the new 64-bit .deb version 🙂
$ sudo dpkg -i package_64.deb
I’m not going to say this will work for EVERY package b/c you are essentially faking out the installer to think your system is supported. You may run into some application errors due to this, however, I have experienced none as of yet.
Adapted from jamesward.com
