On Sat, 2005-07-09 at 14:47 -0500, Jonathan Berry wrote: > 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. Well, not quite no problem, but it works. Can't recall all the gory details now, but it was a bit tricky getting rid of 32-bit Firefox and Mozilla without breaking other things. IIRC, had to do some ugly stuff with rpm --force to get rid of 64-bit browsers, leave required 64-bit libs, and install 32-bit browsers to run 32-bit plugins such as Acroread. > > 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. Running VMwareWorkstation 5.0 on a dual Opteron Tyan K8W MB. Works well. > > 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. Agree. Use the 32-bit stuff where required, 64-bit whenever possible. > > All opinions and advice will be highly appreciated, and thank you in > > advance. > > > > Regards, > > > > Anand > > Jonathan >
