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Do Firefox's and Thunderbird's versions 32 bit work also for 64 bit systems in Linux?

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  • Last reply by fintux

fintux
fintux
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Hello I installed on my 64 bit laptop some Linux distros, each one in an alongside partition. Until now I used only 32 bit distros, because my machine has only 4 GB RAM and I prefer well tested softwares. About Firefox and Thunderbird, I don't use the distro's versions, but I download from Mozilla's site the packages tar.bz2, expand them and save them into a date partition (not a system partition), accessible by each distro. In the same partition I saved also Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, in order to use the same software, the same profiles and the same mail archive with any distro I installed. Now, I'd like to install also a distro that is offered only in the 64 bit version. The question is: may I use the same 32 bit version of Firefox and Thunderbird also with the 64 bit distro, sharing it (and profiles and mail archive) with the other distros (32 bit)? If no, may I use only for the 64 bit distro the tar.bz2 of Firefox and Thunderbird 64 bit, but keeping on sharing profiles and mail archive with 32 bit Firefox and Thunderbird (with the other distros)?

Thanks for your help.

Hello I installed on my 64 bit laptop some Linux distros, each one in an alongside partition. Until now I used only 32 bit distros, because my machine has only 4 GB RAM and I prefer well tested softwares. About Firefox and Thunderbird, I don't use the distro's versions, but I download from Mozilla's site the packages tar.bz2, expand them and save them into a date partition (not a system partition), accessible by each distro. In the same partition I saved also Firefox and Thunderbird profiles, in order to use the same software, the same profiles and the same mail archive with any distro I installed. Now, I'd like to install also a distro that is offered only in the 64 bit version. The question is: may I use the same 32 bit version of Firefox and Thunderbird also with the 64 bit distro, sharing it (and profiles and mail archive) with the other distros (32 bit)? If no, may I use only for the 64 bit distro the tar.bz2 of Firefox and Thunderbird 64 bit, but keeping on sharing profiles and mail archive with 32 bit Firefox and Thunderbird (with the other distros)? Thanks for your help.

All Replies (2)

James
James
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You may need appropriate 32-bit packages in order to run 32-bit versions on 64-bit Linux though.

There are 64-bit versions of Firefox for Linux at https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/all/ and for Thunderbird well they do not make as easy to get http://download.cdn.mozilla.net/pub/mozilla.org/thunderbird/releases/31.2.0/linux-x86_64/ just choose your language like say en-US.

Modified by James

fintux
fintux Question owner
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Hi James, thanks for your reply.

Do you think I could use the 64-bit versions of Firefox and Thunderbird on the 64-bit distro and share the profiles and the mail archive with the 32-bit versions I'm used to use with the 32-bit distros?

Thanks