On Sun, 16 Apr 2006, Debbie Deutsch wrote:
Following advice given elsewhere in this thread, I tried the 32-bit version of FC5 instead of the 64-bit version. Voila! I don't know why it worked. My suspicions center around some issue with the I810 driver, which was what the install had configured to use with the Intel 910GL chipset that my system uses. That's my guess because the system hangs always occurred when it was time to re-draw the entire screen. I suppose I should enter a report in Bugzilla, but if I were a dev I would not find the small amount of information that I can offer up to be very helpful. Alas.
Bugzilla anyway. Then (a) the bug is on record; (b) developers can ask for more information and you might see a way to provide it; (c) others with the same problem can find your entry and add their notes.
Almost as sad as the fact that I have to run the 32-bit version of FC5 on a 64-bit system is the fact that it appears that the 32-bit install is quite a bit zippier than a working 64-bit install on a different system that has the same amount of the exact same memory and a significantly faster processor. The system with 32-bit FC5 has a cheapo 2.66 GHz Pentium CPU; the system with 64-bit FC5 has an AMD 3700+ CPU.
It's a myth that 64 bits is always faster than 32. You may now have a 64-bit data path (I don't know much about the specifics of the architecture), but you also have to move 64-bit pointers and 64-bit long ints even though you may not have more than 4GB RAM. Cache behavior comes into play as well. CPUs are complicated beasts and they interact with memory in complicated ways.
It's been a learning experience about Linux innards, so not all is lost. :-) Thanks for your help as I worked my way through this. I hope I can return the favor some day. Debbie
-- Matthew Saltzman Clemson University Math Sciences mjs AT clemson DOT edu http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
