Skype did not install via smxi on amd64 either.
However, I did install it on an old 64 bit computer that eventually crashed, I installed it from their website just googled 'skype for linux'.
I did have to correct issues with dependencies though.
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debian dropping a high utility metapackage like ia32-libs and replacing it with nothing was not one of the smarter moves debian has made, it needlessly broke all existing documentation and how tos, for no benefit to anyone.

Maintaining a metapackage is not hard, you just update the versions it has as dependencies now and then, that's it.

Unless there was something with multiarch.

However, google is offering a deb download of google earth for debian for 64 bit amd64, so one assumes that it works somehow.

I suggest getting in touch with google if this truly does not work, after all, they are the ones packaging it, so the package should work, and if it doesn't, that's a bug.

Worked fine on 32 bit in my tests, and any dependencies should have been pulled in by the apt-get install -f I added after the dpkg deb install.

However, if their package has ia32-libs as a dependency, then of course it won't work, what google has to do is get the actual packages that it depends on as dependencies, not the metapackage, it's an easy fix to the package, just update dependency list.

skype I did not check, I'll double check it and see if I have the apt-get install -f running after it installs as I now do with google-earth.
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sedonix, all we have to do is generate the package list that was in ia32-libs and have that added for 64 bit installs of stuff like google-earth and skype, it's not rocket science, unless the package debs for skype/google-earth have hard coded in dependency for ia32-libs, but that's a packaging bug, and we should get in touch with the packagers and stop trying to work around their bug, this could have been fixed agas ago by simply contacting the google earth / skype groups and having them fix their packages for 64 bit debian.
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Just installed skype on amd64, difficulty = medium.
Downloaded package from skype website
deb is only available for i386, so, as root:
dpkg --add-architecture i386
apt-get update
cd to download location and dpkg -i (package)
failed to install because of tons of dependencies, so
apt-get install -f
apt-get installed 127 dependencies, and now it works.
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ah, interesting, that might be a fix for the google earth too.

What you did on skype is scriptable as well, so should not present any issues.
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Well. excuuuuuse me! I just did both by the numbers including downloading the 300MB ia32-libs from Debian snapshots. They both run their installs but end up with errors. Since I dont use my amd64 installation except to update it as a sort of backup, I have little interest if they work or not. I am now restarting back to my i386 install where all is fine and dandy. :-)
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I looked it up, and in fact, both skype/google earth docs tell you to use the 32 bit libs plus add-architecture, so smxi now does that in cases where ia32-libs is not found in apt.

Also includes the install -f, so now there is no reason I can see it will not work on newer debian systems via smxi.

I'm going to set up a 64 system soon so I should be able to debug these issues myself in the future.
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Googleearth definitely does not install on amd64 in its present state.
Tried the smxi way did not work, failed to install and I had to purge config files.
Then downloaded package from Google, what they call amd64.deb is actually an i386 package, what the cr#p!
Followed same steps as I did for skype but got same results that I got with smxi, dependencies are not met, so it failed to install.
Checked the Debian wiki wiki.debian.org/GoogleEarth/Install/Wheezy64Bits
omitted the part of the Gdebi installer since it is actually worse than dpkg -i in most cases.
Problem here is that all the troubleshooting steps they mentions were already done, architecture was already there, update was ran several times, and libc6:i386 was already installed.
So I am giving up on that package until they fix it.
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