To go 64 or not to go, that is the question

[Simon Skogh]

> On 9/10/06, Simon Skogh <simon at swedishdrunkard.com> wrote:
> > I got a new rig in the works, and it'll be running an AMD Athlon 64 and
> > I was curious about the state of Ubuntu 64-bit. After doing a quick
> > Google search, I was handed many a forum-post asking for help on
> > problems, but most of these dated back to 2005 and was about Hoary or
> > Breezy.
> >
> > So what's the "current" state of the 64 bit distro, are people still
> > having problems with Java and Flash (i.e. more so than would a 32-bit
> > user)? Is it just as nice and stable as "regular" Dapper?
> >
> > I'd definitely prefer running the 64-bit version, but if there's alot of
> > problems with it still, I'll just stick to the old one.
> >
> > Thanks in advance for any and all input!


On Sun, 2006-09-10 at 18:11 +0900, Craig Hagerman wrote: 
> What is the computer going to be used for? That is the biggest
> consideration when thinking about whether to go with 64 Bit or not. If
> you are running a workstation it would probably be worth it. If  you
> are running a home media center it would be easier to use 32 bit and
> you wouldn't really give up any performance anyway? If you want to
> access more memory than 32 bit will allow, you need 64 bit. And so on.
> People with 64 bit use a chroot to run 32 bit apps, but I always found
> it a kludge (maybe that is me and not the state of the system!) and
> there was always some things that didn't work correctly. I recently
> switched from 64 bit debian to 32 bit Ubuntu since it made more sense
> for my media-centered computing needs.


Thank you for your response, it'll be my "main" machine, used for
everyday work, webdevelopment, running some media on it (not connected
as a media center or anything). So I guess you could call it a
workstation. Unfortunally, I'm still suffering from a minor addiction to
gaming, so it's going to have to be a dual boot with XP, although
everything non-gaming will be in Linux, for obvious reasons. My main
concerns are getting Java and Flash and similar things like that
working, including w32codecs, things that seem to have been broken in
the past atleast.

I don't think that the performance drop for 32 compared to 64 would be
too big for me to accept, but as I've mentioned earlier, 64-bit would
naturally be preferred. I might just hook up the 64-bit and play around
with it for a while, and if it doesn't work, I'll just downgrade. I'm
mostly looking for some info on what there is to expect in a switch, and
if to bother at all.