On 7/9/05, Anand Buddhdev <arb@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi fellow list users, > > I'm soon going to get an AMD64-based computer. I would like to use a > 64-bit linux distro on it, but I'm not yet sure if that is the best > thing to do. I am particularly concerned about firefox and plugins. I > believe that in order to use the binary plugins like flash and java, I > would have to use the i386 version of firefox, instead of the x86_64 > version. This is no problem. You can easily run the 32-bit version of Firefox instead of the 64-bit version. Plugins will work just fine. I've done this on several version of Fedora. > I am also concerned about how VMware would run in under 64-bit FC4. I have never used VMWare, but looks like you got one positive here. > Are there users out there using 32-bit software on 64-bit systems? And Sure am. In fact, OpenOffice is 32-bit, so everyone using a 64-bit OS and OpenOffice is. Works just fine. This is part of the point of the AMD64 architecture. Runs 64-bit, but runs 32-bit as well as 32-bit processors. The only things to watch out for are programs with 32-bit only plugins (like firefox or anything using Windows codecs) and things that have to go in the kernel (like ndiswrapper for a while (though it works now in 64-bit with a 64-bit Windows driver)). > what are your experiences like? Would you recommend that I go for the > 64-bit version, or should I just install the complete OS as i386 (which > kind of defeats the purpose of having an AMD64 processor). Definitely go with the 64-bit. I recently rendered a 3D animation under Blender comparing the speed between Windows (32-bit) and Fedora (64-bit) and it rendered *more that twice as fast* (180 frames, 64-bit 12:35, 32-bit 28:25 (min:sec)) in the 64-bit version. I need to try 32-bit Blender on 64-bit OS and on 32-bit Linux to really have a good comparison of the speed difference, but I think this shows that 64-bit can be much faster. If you have problems that you cannot get around, you could always install both in a dual-boot configuration. > All opinions and advice will be highly appreciated, and thank you in > advance. > > Regards, > > Anand Jonathan
