[Discuss] Are you using a 64bit distro?

[stephen hawkes]

Thanks David.

2 hours David futzing == 4+ hours Stephen futzing

I've had enough problems running flash directly in a 32bit environment (sound died on me once.. took an hour to fix).

I have seen the chroot'ed env as a solution.. that way I can run 32 bit FF and my pluggins. I am still trying to wrap my head around whether that solution is something I'd want to bother with (it seems in-elegant at first, but in comparison to brining in packages from unstable, it seems pretty clean).

While there may be some performance gain, for most of what I am doing I think it would be hard to justify the effort. Other than the menial daily tasks everyone does on their computer I'd be doing some compiling of small projects (school related), and probably not much else (perhaps some audio related stuff with Ardour, various trackers, chuck and other stuff). In the future I may try some video related stuff under linux (I'll have to get a cardbus/pcmcia firewire card though :P).





----- Original Message -----
From: David Bronaugh <dbronaugh at linuxboxen.org>
Date: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 11:09 am
Subject: Re: [Discuss] Are you using a 64bit distro?
To: discuss at vlug.org

> Cody Swanson wrote:
> > We run a lot of 64 bit Suse and Redhat opteron servers here at 
> work. 
> > My main issues have revolved around compiling 64 bit apps 
> (dependency 
> > hell) and some drivers for fiber channel HBAs and raid 
> controllers. On 
> > a standard laptop workstation you may not have as many issues, 
> > especially with newer distros. Then again, I unless you're 
> going to be 
> > running apps that need the extra memory footprint 64bit gives 
> you I 
> > can't think of a viable reason to go that route right now on a 
> laptop.Point/counter-point here. While going to x86_64 gives you 
> a larger 
> memory footprint, on x86 this isn't the only advantage. Having 
> 16 
> registers (instead of 8) and having them be double the size is 
> also a 
> large advantage, and not one to be neglected.
> 
> That being said, the biggest nasty IMO wrt running 64-bit linux 
> on a 
> desktop is the pain with Flash. You can get it running, but it 
> requires 
> that you use nspluginwrapper, and with ubuntu, this means you 
> have to 
> bork in packages from unstable. I got it running, but it took 
> about 2 
> hours of fiddling.
> 
> Small tip if you're going to do that: if you don't have sound, 
> install 
> the 32-bit version of libasound from debian as well as all the 
> other 
> crap. It'll work fine after that.
> 
> Another tip: if you need to run 32-bit apps on debian/ubuntu, 
> you can 
> simply debootstrap a 32-bit debian install into a chroot. 
> There's plenty 
> of instructions on the 'net on how to do that. I use this to run 
> Wine to 
> run a statistical downscaling package at work.
> 
> David
> > stephen hawkes wrote:
> >> Hi all,
> >>
> >> I'll be upgrading at the end of the month to a new laptop. 
> Along with 
> >> deciding how I'll migrate (at this point it looks like I'll 
> just be 
> >> tar'ing my home folder, as a full new install would be best), 
> I have 
> >> to decide on 64 bit VS 32 bit.
> >>
> >> My distro of choice for laptops is Ubuntu, so I'll be going 
> with the 
> >> newest release of that. It looks like codecs and such are not 
> a huge 
> >> problem (like they were when I first had a 64 bit desktop), 
> but I'm 
> >> not sure if I want to bother with the hassles of setting up 
> and 
> >> running 32 bit applications for which there are no 64 bit 
> >> counterparts. 32 bit would be painless, I don't need the 
> extra 
> >> addressable mem space and I doubt I would notice any 
> performance 
> >> benefits in daily usage, however if running a 64 bit distro 
> has been 
> >> mainly painless for some of you, then I see no good reason to 
> not go 
> >> with it.
> >>
> >> What do you guys/gals think and what are you running?
> >>
> >> Also can anyone recommend a good source for a cheap mini-pci 
> wireless 
> >> card that has native drivers (intel, atmel or what have you). 
> I 
> >> expect I will want to toss the broadcom POS in the Dell out 
> the 
> >> window. I'm running a broadcom card on my current laptop with 
> the 
> >> native driver (not ndis wrapper), but it looks like the 
> current 
> >> broadcom abomination will not work with the OS driver. I 
> would really 
> >> like to avoid the ndis wrapper as it has bit me in the behind 
> before 
> >> (kernel locks, poor reliability etc).
> >>
> >> Thanks,
> >> Stephen
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >>
> >>   
> >
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