Multilib in FC7? Disable by default?

[Gilboa Davara]

Hello all,

I've got a simple question that I'd like to table for discussion.
Current -devel tree seems to suggest that FC6 multilib FC6 has almost
doubled in size (from ~13% of the total package count in FC4/5 to ~24%
in the current devel tree)
On the other hand, FC6 is about to include native 64bit OO and gcj (with
browser support) builds, lowering the need for the default i386 support,
as only Wine/Extra actually -requires- multilib support to run.
More-ever, I'd venture to guess that most x86_64 installation will most
likely be used to run native 64bit services and application - mostly on
servers and workstation - lowering the need for multilib even further.
(You won't run 32bit flash on your brand new 32 cores server... let
alone that fact that flash/win32codecs are not supported by Fedora.)

My question is simple: why not add an installation option to disable
multilib support completely.

Mind you, I use my workstation to run 32bit software and games... but I
rather disable multilib completely and create a small, specialized
'stupid' i386 chroot (no DE, no user-applications; only a basic set of
i386  libraries and UI toolkits) and use it to run i386 applications in
a confined space. (Xen/i386 might be an interesting option - though it
won't be able to run hardware GL applications which I need... ;))

- Gilboa