The problem: you’ve taken the trouble to hand-build your finely tuned 64-bit computer, and you’ve installed your favorite 64-bit flavor of Linux — but the cretins who run the World Wide Web are still putting up content viewable only on 32-bit Intel-compatible Web browsers, either designed for their in-house plugins that they supply only as 32-bit binaries, or in compressed media formats for which players are available only as 32-bit binaries. What are your options?
The easiest thing to do is to install a 32-bit browser inside a “chroot jail” — a minimalistic 32-bit system, including just the browser and the support libraries it needs to run (in this case, including specifically the 32-bit plugins and codecs), isolated from the rest of the system in a directory sealed off via the chroot command. You can launch the 32-bit browser from the 64-bit environment and it will connect and browse the Web like normal, but it will not be able to access resources on your machine installed outside of the chroot jail.
For normal browsing and viewing embedded media, this setup works like a charm. You can install plugins and media codecs directly from within the browser, in most cases. You can even install the 32-bit version of your distro’s package management application and keep everything up-to-date at little to no extra effort.
