I’m wondering if it’s possible to have a 64-bit OS such as Ubuntu that can run 32-bit programs and applications such as Firefox. I have some Java testing to do which is restricted to 32-bit, but I do not want to degrade to a 32-bit OS. Windows can run a 64-bit OS, and 32-bit programs and applications, so I am wondering if Linux can do the same.
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Should be possible, with the right libraries.
Ubuntu seemed pretty good at keeping old, depreciated 32 bit infrastructure when others moved away already
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I want to elaborate on @Trooper_ish’s comment. Some Linux distributions in fact still ship or offer 32bit packages. Sometimes they keep those packages in separate repositories that you might need to add or unlock. In the past this was like this in Ubuntu as well, but these days you usually just need to add :i386 to the package name, like so:
sudo apt-get install openjdk-7-jdk:i386
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Should also note that this functionality is called multilib, and most operating systems have stopped shipping multilib enablement by default, so you may need to enable that flag in the package manager and then install a fairly large number of 32 bit core libraries.