dpkg
supports installing packages for other non-native architectures using a system called multiarch. It was introduced in Ubuntu 11.04, so any later release should have it.
You can use dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
command to find the added foreign architectures on multiarch e.g.:
% dpkg --print-foreign-architectures
i386
To find the native architecture, use dpkg --print-architecture
e.g.:
% dpkg --print-architecture
amd64
Alternately, you can also read the file /var/lib/dpkg/arch
to get a list of added architectures (first one is native, although you can remove it):
% cat /var/lib/dpkg/arch
amd64
i386
uname -m
to check what kind of OS you have.x86_64
- 64bit, andi686
- 32bit. Here's more info on multiarch wiki.ubuntu.com/MultiarchSpec.