Após um dist-upgrade dentro do Debian unstable (amd64) eu não posso mais usar programas de 32 bits, porque ia32-libs não é possível instalar:
# apt-get install ia32-libs
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
ia32-libs : Depends: ia32-libs-i386
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
# apt-get install ia32-libs-i386
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
ia32-libs-i386:i386 : Depends: libcups2:i386 (>= 1.4.4-7+squeeze1) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libcurl3:i386 (>= 7.21.0-2) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libgssapi-krb5-2:i386 (>= 1.8.3+dfsg-4squeeze2) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libk5crypto3:i386 (>= 1.8.3+dfsg-4squeeze2) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libkrb5-3:i386 (>= 1.8.3+dfsg-4squeeze2) but it is not going to be installed
Depends: libkrb5support0:i386 (>= 1.8.3+dfsg-4squeeze2) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
O que posso fazer para executar, e. google-earth?
Debian é multiarch por um tempo agora (especialmente sid). Você pode simplesmente instalar as bibliotecas de 32 bits diretamente adicionando i386 como uma arquitetura ao seu sistema. Veja as notas de lançamento para o wheeze do Debian para detalhes. Resumindo:
dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update