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wizzo
n00b
Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 23
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 Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 10:25 pm Post subject: Pentium D 32 bits |
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Hi,
I'm thinking of buying a new machine, equipped with a pentium D (or maybe an ecore 2 duo). I've read that these processors now support 64-bits, but still support 32-bits also. Although 64-bits will be the future very soon, I've read that many applications still don't work in 64-bits (and it's easy to see in portage that amd64 has much less stable versions). My question is: can I install the x86 version of gentoo in this machine ? is it safe ?
And is there anyone who already tried it ? or is everyone going for the 64bits ? 
Thanks. |
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wrythe
n00b
Joined: 03 Aug 2006
Posts: 5
Location: Seattle, WA
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| Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 2:25 am Post subject: |
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I have a Pentium D 940 in my machine and have had no issues (cpu related, anyway) running an x86 install. You should be fine.
[EDIT: fixed some typos.. durr] |
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flophousejoe
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Joined: 01 Nov 2006
Posts: 8
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| Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 2:35 am Post subject: Re: Pentium D 32 bits |
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| wizzo wrote: | | can I install the x86 version of gentoo in this machine ? is it safe ? And is there anyone who already tried it ? or is everyone going for the 64bits |
I have several Gentoo systems, some of which are Pentium 3s and 4s, and some of which are the newfangled 64-bit Pentium Ds. (Specifically, dmesg on these systems claims "Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.20GHz stepping 07").
Since I wanted to take advantage of exciting world of 64 bits, I installed each of the Pentium-D systems using the amd64 Gentoo livecds, and I made sure to set the CFLAGS in make.conf with -march=nocona .
There are a few headaches on amd64, but they're minor.
A few games aren't available (the PSX emulator epsxe comes to mind), but that's no biggie. There are a few packages that I use regularly that don't yet compile on amd64. This sounds much worse than it is: in each of these cases, there already exist 32-bit binary packages in portage. If you emerge these, you automatically get the 32-bit emul-linux-x86 emulation libraries pulled in for you. Packages that fall into this category are openoffice and mozilla-firefox.
(For the record, there exists a stable amd64 package for mozilla-firefox, so you could compile this on amd64 if you wanted to. Unfortunately, there isn't a native 64-bit version of the Flash plugin, so I nevertheless use the binary 32-bit mozilla-firefox package in conjuction with the binary 32-bit Flash package.)
And, yes, there are many packages that are marked unstable on amd64 even though they're stable on x86. While I almost never had to change keywords on x86 machines, I do it all the time on the amd64 systems. It's hit or miss: about half of the packages whose keywords I override in package.keywords work fine, and the other half won't compile. This is annoying, sure, but I haven't yet found myself unable to use any packages on amd64 that I couldn't live without.
Although I can't immediately find any links to back it up, I'm fairly certain that the 64-bit Pentiums offer a 32-bit "legacy mode". It certainly seems like it should be possible for you to pop in an x86 gentoo install CD and build your system as if it were, say, a Pentium 4. You'd be trading l33tnees of your 64-bit system for compatibility. I haven't tried this myself, though, so don't take my word for it. |
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wizzo
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Joined: 09 May 2005
Posts: 23
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| Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2006 10:33 pm Post subject: |
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Ok, thanks for the feedback.
I just wanted to know if someone already had success with 32bits which I'll use first for my main OS. But I'll definetely try the 64bit also. |
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schmobag
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 17 Feb 2004
Posts: 91
Location: Los Angeles
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| Posted: Tue Nov 21, 2006 5:27 pm Post subject: |
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My old desktop died recently, so I just ordered one, which has a pentium-D, and I'm trying to decide on my cflags as well.
As far as I can tell from the gcc man page, my options for -march are the following:
| Code: |
pentium4, pentium4m
Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE and SSE2 instruction set support.
prescott
Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3 instruction set sup-
port.
nocona
Improved version of Intel Pentium4 CPU with 64-bit extensions, MMX, SSE, SSE2 and SSE3
instruction set support.
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I'm not really interested in 64-bitness; it seems like more trouble than it's worth. So nocona is out. pentium4 seems safe, but I don't want to rule out sse3. I'm currently planning to use prescott. Does anyone know a reason why I shouldn't? |
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pilla
Bodhisattva
Joined: 07 Aug 2002
Posts: 7731
Location: Underworld
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| Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2006 1:43 pm Post subject: |
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The 32 bits install will work for sure. I have a Pentium D too, and it's a very nice machine.
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