The new atom chip has an lpia (low-power intel architecture), sounds great except in ubuntu/debian you get an architecture mismatch if you try and install anything compiled for x86.  Take Skype for instance - go to the skype site, download the ubuntu version and the debian package installer just complains that you have the wrong architecture.

Now apparently you can force it to install by using the following command but you’ll have real problems uninstalling it later.

sudo dpkg --force-architecture -i package.deb

What you need to do is to repackage the .deb file - you won’t get any Atom specific optimisations as that would require recompilation of the binaries but repackaging the .deb file will enable uninstallation later.  I found these instructions on the very helpful mydelmini.com site:

1. Download the Ubuntu version of Skype (or whatever).
2. Use the Archive manager to uncompress it. Alternatively, right click on the deb package and select "extract here"
3. Rename the uncompressed folder, by changing the ending from i386 to lpia. (the folder should be now named: skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_lpia)
4. Open the folder
5. There are 3 files. remove the debian-binary file
6. Decompress control.tar.gz. There are tree files in it.
7. Make a folder "DEBIAN" in the main folder, and placed the 3 files you just decompressed inside it.
8. Open one of the files inside DEBIAN, "control". Change the line "Architecture: i386" into "Architecture: lpia"
9. Open the other archive data.tar.gz. There is a folder "." inside. Open it (double click). Select both the folders (usr and etc) and select uncompress.
10. Remove the files control.tar.gz and data.tar.gz
11. You should now have your main folder with the following inside:
DEBIAN folder with tree text files in it (conffiles, control, md5sums); a "usr" folder and a "etc" folder.
12. You are now ready to prepare your lpia deb folder.
13. From the command line, go to the folder that contains your main skype folder you just prepared (most likely named: skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_lpia).
14. type: dpkg --build skype-debian_2.0.0.72-1_lpia
15. Your deb package is ready. Double click on it and follow instruction. After installation it should appear in Synaptic, and from there you can remove it at any time.

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