[wplug] Need advice on 64 bit

[O'Connor, Michael P.]

Well do you really need flash, all I see flash used for is for talking
ads, so I killed it only 32 bit box.  Maybe not having flash on 64 is
more of a blessing then a curse.

Michael P. O'Connor
US&S 
Office: 412-688-2491 
Cell: 412-498-0667
mpoconnor at switch.com

-----Original Message-----
From: wplug-bounces+mpoconnor=switch.com at wplug.org
[mailto:wplug-bounces+mpoconnor=switch.com at wplug.org] On Behalf Of
Jonathan S. Billings
Sent: Thursday, September 28, 2006 2:39 PM
To: General user list
Subject: Re: [wplug] Need advice on 64 bit

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.
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