Upgrade to AMD 64bit?

[Daniel Mons]

Senectus . wrote:
> I have 7.10 installed and it just occurred to me that I could be using
> the AMD 64 version :-P
> Is that a complete re-install or is there an upgrade path for that?
> 

Complete reinstall.  Packages and your kernel need to be compiled for 
the new architecture, which means replacing every single package on your 
system.  Of course, that isn't as bad as it seems under Linux.  Back up 
your /etc and /home folders (and any other locations for stuff you have 
installed - like MySQL databases and other things that tend to float 
around in /var), and when you build the new system, put them back in, 
and everything is back to where it left off.

However, it needs to be asked, why do you want to upgrade?  Do you use 
any particular applications that take advantage of 64bit architecture? 
Say, like enterprise class databases, calculating of large floating 
point numbers (3D rendering, film compositing, etc)?  Do you need to use 
systems with more than 4GB of RAM (or more accurately, require more than 
4GB of RAM per process)?

These are where 64bit architectures come into play.  You won't see any 
performance gain at the average desktop level using 64bit.

The downside too is that (as someone has already mentioned), proprietary 
applications often lag behind free software.  Adobe (ex-Macromedia) 
Flash still is not built for 64bit Linux - meaning if you're a YouTube 
or other flash website regular, you'll have to jump through some hoops 
to get 32bit flash working on a 64bit system.  Similarly, tools like 
Citrix ICA client are not 64bit friendly.

I admin some rather large Linux servers day to day as my job, and all of 
these are 64bit.  However, this email is typed to you from my notebook, 
running 32bit Ubuntu Gutsy (despite running a 64bit Intel Core2Duo CPU). 
  While I'm angered by the idea of limiting my choice of platform 
somewhat by 3rd party proprietary software, a 32bit desktop is far less 
effort to maintain for now, particularly when it comes to using flash 
and Citrix access to work.

-Dan