DraftSight and Ubuntu 11.10 64bit

Ubuntu 11.10 has multiarch support. This is a feature that makes the installation of 32bit applications on a 64bit OS easier. Well that doesn't work with DraftSight. The package failed to be installed correctly in every possible workaround I tried. DraftSight installed and worked after some tricks but it was marked as damaged so it had to be removed. (You are unable to update your system or install new programs if you have damaged packages).

So the only way to install and  run DS on a 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 is to completely ignore dpkg.
How to do that? Here are the necessary steps.

• Install the necessary dependencies of DraftSight: sudo apt-get install libdirectfb-extra sendmail
• Install this library from Natty.
• Extract the contents of DraftSight.deb. For your ease put Draftsight.deb file inside your home folder.Then right click on the DraftSight.deb and select "Extract here"
• Open nautilus as root ( Press Alt+F2, type gksu nautilus, press Enter, insert you password and press Enter again)
• Copy the contents of ~/DraftSight/var and ~/DraftSight/opt into you system's /var and /opt folders
• Open a terminal and type: cd ~/DraftSight/DEBIAN  then type sudo ./preinst and  sudo ./postinst

Now you are able to work with DraftSight on your 64bit Ubuntu without any dpkg problems.

 I don't like workarounds like this but unfortunately it is the only way to install DraftSight on a 64bit Ubuntu 11.10 system.

Important Update: This workaround is for DraftSight V1R1.3

The newer V1R1.4 version doesn't need any more the library from Natty and probably sendmail. Also the path to DraftSight's startup script has been changed to /opt/dassault-systemes/draftsight/bin/draftsight

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