amd64 - 32bit vs 64bit. Should I switch?

marvin rouge · Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2005 2:37 pm Post subject:

I'm considering switching from amd64 to x86 . Yeah, it's a kind of defeat, but i just can't use my film scanner with my amd64 box. No Sane support, so I tried Vuescan, I tried to setup a 32bits chroot, I have 2005.0 profile (with multilib) ... but no luck, I always end with a USB problem. Even with VmWare (5.0-rc?).

I think I'm going to go back 32 bits.

weyhan · Apprentice Joined: 27 May 2003 Posts: 245

IMHO, the correct question is to ask yourself, "What are you going to do with the system?" When you have figured that out, than ask, "Will AMD64 support what I want to do or is x86 going to support it better?"

Asking for opinion in this area is kind of pointless because not everyone will need the same thing as you do. And if the one thing you really need, and no one else cares about it, the opinions you have gather would have worked against you. :wink:

HTH
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Alpha_Beta · n00b Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 47 Location: Vancouver, BC

I was wondering if Webserver stuff works in amd64? I've been trying to get a system up and running but have been having networking issues (like everyone else it seems :wink:

). I'm trying to learn PHP and would like to have a webserver (apache, mySQL, any others I need) up on a linux system / have kdevelope as well. I'm probably going to wait a few more days for the images on the servers to be fixed.
BTW: are the new images also going to fix the entire looking-for-r3-when-the-CD-has-r1 thing I heard about?
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jtopping · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 15

just make sure you get firefox-bin, as its the 32bit "official" firefox build....because flash is only functional on 32bit and sun's 1.5 java doesnt have 64bit plugin.

All my videos play fine in linux...can someone explain why i need w32codecs? divx works great w/o it...
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jtopping · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 15

Alpha_Beta · n00b Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 47 Location: Vancouver, BC

jtopping · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 15

oh...i have to disable noapic in order to read the cd correctly...tar reads the files on the CD when installing portage as "corrupted" when apic isnt told to be "no" :twisted:

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magnesium · Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2005 5:52 am Post subject:

webstuffs works fine on amd64. apache with php support and mysql all work great
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jtopping · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2005 Posts: 15

bbbill_42 · n00b Joined: 24 Aug 2004 Posts: 9

id say amd64 or ~amd64 if youre semi-adventurous.
you can always get a chroot set up, and almost everything works now.

performance is better but not insane in most cases.
if you have an ati card you may want to think x86 tho, they barely support xorg-32 right now, and i mean barely.

everything else you can install as bin easily.

x86 only if you need stability and want to play it very safe. but thats what debian woody is for anyway =p

-bill

Alpha_Beta · n00b Joined: 12 Nov 2003 Posts: 47 Location: Vancouver, BC

Thanks guys, I'll be installing as soon as I get an image that I can burn! Or, does anyone know how to install 2005.0 off of a 2004.3 liveCD?
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wiktorw · n00b Joined: 14 Dec 2004 Posts: 39 Location: Lodz, Poland

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Psykk · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 49

So I've got my new A64, and I've decided to waste my time with something wholly unproductive, i.e. Gentoo. Now I'm wondering whether I want to set this sucker up in 32 bit or 64 bit mode. It's mainly application compatibility I'm interested it. I'd like to play around with 64 bit coding, not that it makes a big difference...but I'd like to be able to run the usual suite of apps without extra headaches.

So am I looking for trouble by installing 64 bit Gentoo, or do things generally work?

(OpenOffice 2.0 beta matters particularly to me, since it's one of the few really nice OSS packages. OOo 1.1 doesn't quite reach the bar. Mono is also important, since I intend to work with C# a fair bit.)
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fourhead · Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2005 2:27 pm Post subject:

Go and spend >$200 for Windows XP 64.

zpet731 · Posted: Tue Apr 12, 2005 2:33 pm Post subject:

There are plentyof threads regarding this topic already. But ask yourself one thing:

Why do I own a 64bit machine?

and soon after you realise: "Cause I want to run a 64bit OS"

then you say: "I'll install gentoo in 64-bit"

Just kiddin', but not really...P

About the other software Im sure you can run it in binary using 32bit emulation. Concerned about OO suite. Yea nice software I like it personally, but once you get a taste of LaTeX you never go back. Maybe just to admire how they improved the GUI.

The other thing is the acroread hog. Well I gave him up too. Even though I have a powerfull 64bit machine, I don't allow useless hogs on board. Xpdf is not the nicest application but it does the job in a fraction of the time it takes acrobat.

Currently pure 64bit from me!
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Corona688 · Veteran Joined: 10 Jan 2004 Posts: 1204

hvengel · Guru Joined: 19 Sep 2004 Posts: 515

I am currently running one mono app in 64 bit. It is the only one I am interested in running so I can't speak to how well mono works in general. For amd64 you have to use mono versions >= 1.1 since version before that do not support the amd64. These are masked and you must unmask it to get it to emerge. I am currently running 1.1.5 with autopano-SIFT 2.2.

Don't know about OO 2.0 but there is another thread in the ADM64 section of the forum that has details.

I am only running a few apps in emulation mode. OO, Realplayer and PTStitcher.

My experience is that most stuff works and that the list of those that don't is getting smaller on an almost daily basis. There are a few things that I have not been able to get working but most of it is smaller stuff. My Wacom tablet is not fully functional even thought I have tried all of the lasted patches. I can not use RealPlayer as a plugin in my 64 bit firefox (not a big deal for me) and the available 64 bit flash plugins are not fully functional (again I don't really care).

Since amd64 bit is bleeding edge you will have to strugle to get somethings working. You may also strugle with something and fail and then find a week later that there is now a working solution. This has happened to me several times.

Psykk · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2005 Posts: 49

So, I should install 64 bit but I should not use 2005.01 ?
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AussieAndrew · n00b Joined: 10 Apr 2005 Posts: 14

I just did a 2005.0 ~amd64 install and everything worked well so far .. no problems with firefox, openoffce 2 beta (not through portage though), etc :-)

slugworth · Apprentice Joined: 21 Aug 2004 Posts: 189

I wouldnt recomend ~amd64, but 2005.01 might be worth a try. If not you can always just reinstall.
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elknco1 · n00b Joined: 30 Mar 2005 Posts: 20

depends on how much extra time u have i suppose. if you'd rather just emerge programs and not have to worry about them not working (for reasons other than the usual) i'd say just go w/ x86. if you like fun and adventure, theres workarounds for a lot of things not working in 64-bit mode. like mplayer32, firefox-bin, mplayerplug-in32, etc.. not sure about mono. openoffice-bin seems to work for me.
i recomment 2005.0 for amd64. i haven't tried out 2005.01 yet. i guess if you have problems w/ compatibility then u can always goto the 32-bit chroot. too much work for my blood but i'm finding 64-bit to be pretty good. i have warcraft3 working under wine so i'm happy

VValdo · Guru Joined: 08 Jan 2005 Posts: 395

amd64 (stable). Love it.

The one "hole": Flash doesn't work w/64bit firefox.

I live w/o it. Honestly, aside from not being able to see homestarrunner on this machine I'd never even know it wasn't on.

W

Omadon · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 16 Jan 2004 Posts: 108

I just wrote a short (short as in very short, only 4 pages) on the AMD64, nothing too technical, but I did use the chip specification documentation from AMD to write it. While reading through it I noticed they dropped memory segmentation control from the chip since most operating systems handle this in software mode. As a result, the documentation claims compiled (and optimized) code will be less instruction intensive, and therefore be executed much faster than code that is compiled to use memory segmentation (if you are operating the chip in 32 bit mode, it will still use memory segmentation). I don't know how important that is when talking about pure speed, but I can say this:

I compiled Gentoo at stage 2 on my Intel Pentium 4 2.66GHz in around 10-12 hours
With similar optimizations, I compiled the same system on my AMD 64 2GHz chip (in 64 bit mode) in less than 4.

How much of this is due to the extended registers offered by the AMD chip I don't know, how much of it actually depended on being in 64 bit mode I can't say either, but I can say it runs great in 64 bit mode.

I got this from http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/white_papers_and_tech_docs/24592.pdf , the second chapter on memory organization.

xanas3712 · Guru Joined: 15 Oct 2004 Posts: 455

Ok, I know everyone has their chosen route, and I've read the threads about this (not all of them of course but several, including the faq) but I'm still not perfectly clear on the advantages/disadvantages as everyone has their own ideas of what is/is not needed.

So, I'm asking here.

I know that if I want to use the x86 cds I can use
CFLAGS="-O3 -march=athlon-xp -maccumulate-outgoing-args -ftracer -pipe -msse2 -fPIC" <-- to get SSE2 and all the nice advantages of the Athlon 64 but still run in native 32 bit mode.

I also am familiar with the flags that I would use with the amd64.

However, there are some applications or plugins or what-not that do not work under -march=amd64 ? I've read that I can compile in 32 bit and add x86 to accepted keywords to still get the apps. However, from reading the faq it seems like not everything works doing just that. Can someone perhaps list the applications they are aware of that don't work if I use amd64 architecture? So far I've read that flash player in firefox doesn't work, but does that only apply to firefox compiled for 64 bit?

I assume based on some of the other threads if I need to compile in 32 bit I can simply use the same cflags I'd use with the x86 cd and then ./configure Is that correct?

Also, if there are some things I might want that can't be made to work, I'm probably going to want to go the 32 bit route. In that case, for applications that would benefit from 64bit is there a way to get this without having the OS compiled in 64 bit or do you basically forsake that possibility?

Just trying to get clear on the advantages/disadvantages of going the different ways, and what I can do to get around them when necessary.

I've been reading several of the threads but since they were a bit inspecific I'm trying to ask it all in one place to get some clarity

Also I'd like to know if there are any possible driver issues that might exist going one route or the other, as that's important. I'd like 3d acceleration and I'm running an ATI card on here. I also have a motherboard with a soundcard that I couldn't find support for not so long ago.. It's an Nvidia ALC850 (I don't expect everyone to go through explaining how to run that stuff, I can search again for it I just want to know if it can be made to work or not with one particular setup or with the other. And I would generally prefer the setup that requires less work rather than the one that requires more unless the more is totally worth it).