[wplug] Need advice on 64 bit

[Jonathan S. Billings]

On 09/28/2006 02:15 PM, Coutch, Robert wrote:
> My biggest question is: Should I run 32 bit Linux or 64 bit.
>  
> As you probably know I like to game on my system so I'll need Nvidia 
> drivers to play my 32 bit games.
> Any advice here? I sure don't want to hurt performance of these games 
> running on my system.
>  
> How do 32 bit programs run on 64 bit Linux and how well does this work?

Performance isn't really affected by running 32 bit programs on a 64 bit
system, as long as it works.  The only thing you really gain with having
a 64 bit OS is the ability to address larger amounts of memory.

Linux on x86_64 can be frustrating, since there are many packages that
are either only released for x86 or have poor support for the x86_64
architecture.

For example, there's an x86_64 version of firefox.  However, the flash
plugin (amongst others) is only released for x86_32.  So, you are stuck
running the x86_32 version of firefox if you want to view flash on the
web, and this can royally confuse package managers.

You'll find a lot of the binary-only releases of software, drivers or
libraries are x86_32 only.

Also, the new x86_64 standard filesystem confuses some authors, and they
don't realize that there are packages in /lib64, /usr/lib64 or
/usr/local/lib64.  Also they'll try installing 64 bit libraries into the
wrong place.

Lastly, when developing, you'll find that libraries that are built
without the right flags, such that they aren't usable by 64 bit programs.

-- 
Jonathan Billings <billings at negate.org>

We can defeat gravity.  The problem is the paperwork involved.