My laptop was factory installed with the 32 bit Ubuntu Linux distribution. This has served me well for a long time but I have been playing with the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) and wanted to compile the distribution to test a fix to the Android emulator.
Unfortunately the AOSP build process requires a 64 bit distribution and I was faced with the prospect of having to reinstall my laptop and rebuild my working environment. That didn’t seem too exciting to me so after a bit of research I decided to try something a little different. Basically I performed open heart surgery on my Ubuntu installation and replaced the 32 bit distribution with a 64 bit distribution on the live running machine.
I followed a few good HOWTOs that explained how to setup the multi-arch distribution and gave a general overview of how to go about swapping the distribution.
The main inspiration/instructions used were