AMD 64 Bit Processor Info Wanted

[Matthew Palmer]

On Fri, Dec 30, 2005 at 09:00:08PM -0500, David M. Carney wrote:
> Ahh, the time has finally come to consider replacing my Athlon XP 2100+ with 
> 512 megs ram.
> 
> I'm thinking about getting a Athlon 64 bit system.
> 
> So I want to know:
> 
> 1. How is 64 bit Ubuntu?

Tasty.

> 2. Will I have to recompile apps to get full 64 bit functionality?

Everything that comes with Ubuntu AMD64 is 64-bit ready.  For 3rd party
stuff, if it's not built for 64-bit, you can either rebuild it yourself (if
you can), or run the relevant software in a 32 bit (i386) chroot.

> 3. Are there apps that won't work??

Anything that is pre-compiled for 32-bit (such as binary-only drivers, DLLs
for WMV codec support, Skype, Macromedia Flash player, etc[1]) won't work
inside your main 64 bit machine, and will require special handling (if they
can be used at all).

- Matt

[1] Skype and Flash may have 64-bit compiled versions, I'm just listing
common binary-only gunk people like to use.