is 64 bit ready for primetime yet?

[Alan Dacey Sr.]

On Saturday, April 02, 2011 09:33:48 pm Paul Lemmons wrote:
> When Natty comes out I am planning on doing a clean install. My first on 
> this particular machine since Feisty. I am considering the 64 bit 
> version. The machine has more than 4GB of ram so I have been 
> successfully running the pae version without any real hiccups.  It has 
> been a long time since I considered "real" 64 bit and was wondering has 
> it matured to the point where it is as smooth, application and stability 
> wise, as the 32 bit version? In particular: Firefox? Flash? Java? VMWare 
> Workstation?
> 
> 

I've been running 64-bit for a while now and everything goes very smoothly.  The only isues, bit-wise, is that most 3rd party programs don't make 64-bit versions.  As an example I tried to check out Lotus Notes last year and there was no 64-bit download.  I didn't feel like going through the bother of getting it to run.  Even that new CAD software (too lazy to look up the name) that just got opened up doesn't have a 64-bit version either.
Right after you do your install add Medibuntu and install flash, java ,etc.  You will have no problems ( at least I haven't since 8.10 or so).  The package ia32-libs gets installed on dependencies and there is nothing in the repositories that will not work on it and most everything else uses it well.  Firefox 2 through 4 runs/ran fine.  If you have odd things happen with embedded flash objects in FF4, get the 64-bit beta version from adobe to fix it.
What is really awesome for all FOSS is that there are less things that go wonky with Kubuntu 10.10 64-bit than with Win 7 64-bit.  I had to get my wife a new machine and there are too many IE6 sites that she absolutely needs to do her job so I made her a modern beast of a computer and installed the other OS.  Do you know that there is both a 32 and 64 bit version of IE and each is entirely separate.  Twice the installs of AlternaTiff, f lash, etc and you can't even make the 64 bit version the default browser.  Thankfuly she only needs that for two sites, FF for the rest.  There are also some odd things that go wrong with it from time to time that are almost always impossible to reproduce..  The same software with the same settings creates different versions of /scanned/ documents than with on old XP.  And let's not talk about sharing folders on our home network.
Anyway, I guess what I am trying to say is the days of being wary of the 64-bit OS is past.

Alan