Install python 32 bit on 64 bit linux
32bit-64bit, dependencies, installation, linux, python-2.7
Solution
I think you should use a virtual environment and install a different python version in it. Check this answer for better understanding --> Is it possible to install another version of Python to Virtualenv?
Problem
I basically have two questions: - How do you install 32bit python alongside 64bit python on linux? - How do I fix my broken system from the failed attempt below? I just tried to install 32bit python alongside my 64bit python on linux mint 16. It's not as straight forward as I hoped for (something like `sudo apt-get install python32` would be nice) but after a bit of googling I downloaded python 2.7.6 and did the following: ``` sudo apt-get install ia32-libs gcc-multilib checkinstall CC="gcc -m32" LDFLAGS="-L/lib32 -L/usr/lib32 -Lpwd/lib32 -Wl,-rpath,/lib32 -Wl,-rpath,/usr/lib32" ./configure --prefix=/opt/pym32 make sudo checkinstall ``` The should supposedly make me able to run 32bit og 64bit (default) like this: ``` python -c 'import sys; print sys.maxint' /opt/pym32/bin/python -c 'import sys; print sys.maxint' ``` ... but /opt/pym32/ wasn't even created. Worse, my system now reports 29 broken dependencies, indicating that the new python replaced the old one or something like that. To fix it, aptitude suggests that I remove a whole bunch of packages that I need and install a whole bunch of packages that I don't need. I used `checkinstall` rather than `make install` to be able to reverse/uninstall if something went wrong, but uninstalling/reinstalling python won't work because of the broken dependencies. Is there a way to get out of this mess?