[Techtalk] chroot environment

[Gwen Morse]

I want to set up a Playstation 2 emulator (http://pcsx2.net/) on linux
(I already have it working on Windows). There is a linux build,
however, it doesn't run on 64-bit systems.

They suggest setting up a 32 bit chroot environment. My experience
with chroot is exactly encompassed by typing it when using a livecd to
fix something I've borked. I've never set one up.

I'm on Fedora 13 using KDE and I've installed mock and installed the
base 386 package for Fedora 12, as well as yum, gnome, and a few
libraries the emulator needs. (it seemed easier to use different
versions of everything to help keep it all straight). But, I don't
really understand what the chroot environment *is*.

How will I get to it when I'm ready to use it? The emulator needs a
graphical environment (thus including gnome). In order to access it,
am I going to want to boot my regular Fedora 13 into init state 3
(terminal) and then launch  Fedora 12 + gnome from there?

Is using this chroot environment going to be significantly slower than
setting up a completely different partition and installing Fedora 12
on that? Is there a way to boot directly into the chroot environment
(by adding it to grub) once I'm done with the configuring?

I sort of dimly (think I) understand that the chroot environment is
supposed to be to save me from having to set up a whole new install of
linux...but...other than that I'm very confused as to the reasoning
behind  what I'm doing. I can set things up without understanding
"why" (I can follow pages of directions as well as the next person),
but I do like to know "why" I'm doing something.