AMD 64 Bit Processor Info Wanted

[Arlen Christian Mart Cuss]

This is mostly incorrect. Only programs which have been *rewritten* to 
use a 64-bit environment to its fullest extent (*not* just ported) will 
give any speed increase - but, almost all the time, `twice as fast' is a 
pipe dream. There are a few open source Flash libraries that are useful 
for a 64-bit environment, but you can use a 32-bit chroot (which is not 
difficult) to use 32-bit software.

Almost all packages for i386 in the Ubuntu APT repositories also exist 
for amd64, so *typically* software compilation is not an issue. Most 
source compiles without change.

There's not really much of an issue in using it, is there? Might as well 
be future proof!

    Arlen.

Sasha Tsykin wrote:

> Hey,
>
> I use an AMD64 bit processor in Ubuntu, and find it very useful. There 
> is only really one pro, you will get an operating system almost twi=. 
> ce as fast as the 32-bit version. The downsides seem to be that the 
> macromedia flash plugin doesn't work yet in 64-bit and firefox, at 
> least for me, seems to exhibit a degree of instability. I like 64-it 
> because I do a lot of video encodin and so the extra speed is very 
> useful for me.
>
> With regard to your question about recompiling, You will have to 
> recompile applications, probably, because if they are compiled with 
> 32-bit libraries, they will not work with 64-bit compiles, however, 
> any programs you got through synaptic will work just as well in 64-bit 
> as in 32-bit, if not better.
>
> Probably not worth the effort unless you need the extra processing 
> power for something specific.
>
> Sasha