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jonfr
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Joined: 20 Jul 2003
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Location: Denmark
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 Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 7:59 pm Post subject: How stable is Gentoo Linux 64bit ? |
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I am testing Gentoo Linux 64bit too see if there has been any change from my last test three years ago. So far I am not impressed, as there are issues that I am facing.
The main issue being that I can't use the official nvidia driver, as there doesn't appear to be a 64bit version of him in portage. Using the native xorg driver is rather bad, as nothing appears to be working properly.
How is this for other Gentoo Linux 64 bit users ? I am trying to eliminate that this is just a beginners issues that I am dealing with. |
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forkbomb
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 22 Apr 2009
Posts: 115
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:06 pm Post subject: Re: How stable is Gentoo Linux 64bit ? |
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| jonfr wrote: |
The main issue being that I can't use the official nvidia driver, as there doesn't appear to be a 64bit version of him in portage. Using the native xorg driver is rather bad, as nothing appears to be working properly. |
Really? No problems on my end (EVGA 8600GTS).
The worst part of running 64-bit Linux is explaining to people that most of the bogeymen about 64-bit Linux haven't been relevant - or at least are reasonably circumventable (if that's a word) - for at least the last few years.
EDIT: actually, come to think of it... did you do the initial install with the multilib use flag? I'm not sure if my drivers were built as 32 or 64 bit but I'm pretty sure they're 64-bit even though I have the multilib use flag set.
The official NVIDIA page shows drivers for AMD64...
http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html |
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jonfr
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Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:11 pm Post subject: |
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I have this Nvidia card if you are intrested.
| Code: | | 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8400 GS (rev a1) |
I did do a standard Gentoo Linux 64bit setup, with multilib. So I have both 32bit libs and 64bit libs in the system. I find it strange that there isn't a native 64bit driver for my nvidia card. But I did notice that it did install a 32bit layer when I did install the driver. |
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Elv13
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Joined: 13 Nov 2005
Posts: 388
Location: Socialist land of North America
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:21 pm Post subject: |
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| Nvidia provide 64bit drivers and gentoo install them if your make.conf is configured correctly (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu and ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~amd64"). On top of that, the version gentoo provide is -pkg2, the version with the 32bit compatibility layer, but you can install pkg0 or pkg1 that come without it, but forget most games. |
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doctork
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Joined: 25 Apr 2004
Posts: 370
Location: Cleveland, OH
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:26 pm Post subject: |
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Well, I've been using 64-bit Gentoo with the (as far as I know) 64-bit Nvidia driver for about three years. Currently I running same on two AMD X2 systems, one AMD Phenom, and a Core2 Duo laptop. I've never had any stability problems.
--
doc |
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forkbomb
Tux's lil' helper
Joined: 22 Apr 2009
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:27 pm Post subject: |
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I assume you just did the standard
| Code: | | emerge nvidia-drivers |
I do remember I had some issues getting X to start up properly and actually had to pull a working Xorg.conf from my previous distro.
Does X start at all? What do you mean when you say "nothing appears to be working properly?"
Last edited by forkbomb on Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:29 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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i92guboj
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Joined: 30 Nov 2004
Posts: 10315
Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:27 pm Post subject: Re: How stable is Gentoo Linux 64bit ? |
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| jonfr wrote: | I am testing Gentoo Linux 64bit too see if there has been any change from my last test three years ago. So far I am not impressed, as there are issues that I am facing.
The main issue being that I can't use the official nvidia driver, as there doesn't appear to be a 64bit version of him in portage. Using the native xorg driver is rather bad, as nothing appears to be working properly.
How is this for other Gentoo Linux 64 bit users ? I am trying to eliminate that this is just a beginners issues that I am dealing with. |
nVidia has no problem with 64 bits setups at all. You might have another problem with it. Maybe you didn't configure xorg.conf properly, maybe there's some issue with your concrete card or whatever.
I've been using 64 bits for years, and I don't have any problem that's specific to 64 bits. It's as stable as x86.
If you have any concrete problem, try describing it better. Be as concrete as you can, and let us know why do you think 64 bits is an issue. |
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dmpogo
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Location: Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:54 pm Post subject: |
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Look inside ebuilds in /usr/portage/x11-drivers/nvidia . You will see that all nvidia drivers are keyworded for amd64.
The latest stable (amd64) is nvidia-drivers-180.29.ebuild, the latest unstable (~amd64) is nvidia-drivers-180.60.ebuild |
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dmpogo
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| Posted: Sun Jun 14, 2009 8:55 pm Post subject: |
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Look inside ebuilds in /usr/portage/x11-drivers/nvidia . You will see that all nvidia drivers are keyworded for amd64.
The latest stable (amd64) is nvidia-drivers-180.29.ebuild, the latest unstable (~amd64) is nvidia-drivers-180.60.ebuild
One thing is that NVIDIA tends to with time to drop support for older card in newer drivers releases (that is why gentoo keeps
nvidia-drivers-173.14.x nvidia-drivers-96.43.x and nvidia-drivers-71.86.x families). Yours seems to be new, however, and should be supported by the latest driver |
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jonfr
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Joined: 20 Jul 2003
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Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 12:09 am Post subject: |
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| forkbomb wrote: | I assume you just did the standard
| Code: | | emerge nvidia-drivers |
I do remember I had some issues getting X to start up properly and actually had to pull a working Xorg.conf from my previous distro.
Does X start at all? What do you mean when you say "nothing appears to be working properly?" |
I did do the standard emerge nvidia-drivers, I assume that all emerers are amd64 based on the make.conf file. But the make.conf is based on the make.conf.example found the stage3 package.
When I try to start xorg with the nvidia driver, everything locks up. It does however work with nv driver that comes with xorg-x11.
I am not at home now, so I can't test it. I am going to work on this more when I get home on 18th of June. |
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d2_racing
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Joined: 25 Apr 2005
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Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 4:33 am Post subject: |
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| doctork wrote: | Well, I've been using 64-bit Gentoo with the (as far as I know) 64-bit Nvidia driver for about three years. Currently I running same on two AMD X2 systems, one AMD Phenom, and a Core2 Duo laptop. I've never had any stability problems.
--
doc |
In fact, me too, it's stable as the x86 arch. |
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jonfr
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Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 6:04 am Post subject: |
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| Then I should have got the stable 64bit driver. But I still did see the 32bit emu layer being installed before the nvidia driver was installed. |
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i92guboj
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Joined: 30 Nov 2004
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Location: Córdoba (Spain)
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| Posted: Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:17 am Post subject: |
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| You said you have a multilib system, so that's not strange. Otherwise, 32 bits applications wouldn't find the proper gl libs. |
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jonfr
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Location: Denmark
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| Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 3:17 am Post subject: |
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| Good news, I got the nvidia driver to work. All I had to was using then newest version of the driver. |
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devsk
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Joined: 24 Oct 2003
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Location: Bay Area, CA
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| Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 8:21 am Post subject: |
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| VERY! |
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MaximeG
l33t
Joined: 15 Apr 2008
Posts: 722
Location: Belgium
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| Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:28 am Post subject: |
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Hi,
I use Gentoo ~amd64 for about two years no. And I don't have any 64bits specific issues.
Regards,
Maxime
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dmpogo
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Location: Canada
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| Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2009 9:36 am Post subject: |
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| I use amd64 Gentoo since 2004 (from 2.6.3 kernel - I actually went to Gentoo because it was first to support 64-bit opterons) and since 2005 (I guess with 2.6.9) have it on desktops. Never had any 64-bit specific issues, except that for a while (like flash) some things had to be run in 32-bit emulation. |
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kernelOfTruth
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Joined: 20 Dec 2005
Posts: 6111
Location: Vienna, Austria; Germany; hello world :)
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pdw_hu
Apprentice
Joined: 02 Jun 2008
Posts: 200
Location: Budapest, Hungary
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 10:06 am Post subject: |
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| Imho the question should be: "Is there a point in staying with x86?" :) |
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d2_racing
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Joined: 25 Apr 2005
Posts: 13047
Location: Ste-Foy,Canada
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 11:04 am Post subject: |
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Nowadays, if you know how Gentoo works, the fun is inside the ~arch, since it's pretty stable and you have a lot of recent packages.
But, if you want to push more your luck...you can install a lot of experimental overlays too  |
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depontius
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 3:40 pm Post subject: |
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A few years back I bought an amd64 machine for our main computer in the study, and installed it with amd64.
At that time, it was flaky as all get-out. There was no native flash, only nspluginwrapper, and in spite of what people say, flash is necessary for kids to show parents the silly stuff they find on YouTube, and parents have to look at such stuff their kids want to show them. We tried running native for a while, then for a while I ran xdm in a 32-bit chroot, moving the entire interactive session to 32-bit, then I just went to 32-bit, and there it has stayed.
I've since installed several other systems with 64-bit and all have done well, none of the flakiness of that first one. Well, flash on my daughter's Ubuntu was a pain back in the Feisty days, but that's gotten better, too.
Maybe it's time to try 64-bit again.
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dmpogo
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:36 pm Post subject: |
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| depontius wrote: | A few years back I bought an amd64 machine for our main computer in the study, and installed it with amd64.
At that time, it was flaky as all get-out. There was no native flash, only nspluginwrapper, and in spite of what people say, flash is necessary for kids to show parents the silly stuff they find on YouTube, and parents have to look at such stuff their kids want to show them. We tried running native for a while, then for a while I ran xdm in a 32-bit chroot, moving the entire interactive session to 32-bit, then I just went to 32-bit, and there it has stayed.
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You could have just run 32 bit firefox-bin, for which 32-bit flash worked fine. I did indeed kept for years both 32-bit and 64-bit firefox install on amd64 setup. Never bothered with nspluginwrapper. |
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depontius
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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| dmpogo wrote: | | depontius wrote: | A few years back I bought an amd64 machine for our main computer in the study, and installed it with amd64.
At that time, it was flaky as all get-out. There was no native flash, only nspluginwrapper, and in spite of what people say, flash is necessary for kids to show parents the silly stuff they find on YouTube, and parents have to look at such stuff their kids want to show them. We tried running native for a while, then for a while I ran xdm in a 32-bit chroot, moving the entire interactive session to 32-bit, then I just went to 32-bit, and there it has stayed.
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You could have just run 32 bit firefox-bin, for which 32-bit flash worked fine. I did indeed kept for years both 32-bit and 64-bit firefox install on amd64 setup. Never bothered with nspluginwrapper. |
I had other stuff installed that wanted to delta off of the firefox from-source, so for a while I had both binary and compiled-from-source versions installed. It was difficult to predict which one would pop up in any given circumstance - which one the wrapper would choose.
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sera
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 5:03 pm Post subject: |
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Around January/February 05 I did my first gentoo amd64 install. It was bothersome.
The main issue was to learn to treat it differently than x86 despite the many similarities just like you would with mips arm hpp or whatever. This was even worse as you had to follow the x86 handbook as the amd64 was barely existing.
After learning the concepts and accepting that there will be some 32-bit stuff around for years to come it wasn't that difficult anymore to set up a full featured desktop (at least what I see as full featured desktop).
Flash was always available. If you had no luck to set up a 64bit browser you could instead use a 32bit browser.
Amd64 felt always more stable than x86, guess the x86 history is a burden in itself. So there was some more trouble setting up and maintain amd64 than x86 for some time and also the amd64 profile was lagging behind x86 in versions and availability of packages. But this seems mostly the past.
I don't see any reasons anymore to use a x86 profile for a x86_64 cpu unless you want to hold on to your x86 knowledge. |
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depontius
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| Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2009 6:51 pm Post subject: |
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| sera wrote: | | I don't see any reasons anymore to use a x86 profile for a x86_64 cpu unless you want to hold on to your x86 knowledge. |
It's also not clear to me that unless you have a clear reason, it is neither necessary nor desirable to move to 64-bit.
Most of us just don't need it. There are 2 2GB and 2 1G machines at home, everything else is smaller. Most of what we do is readily containable on a 32-bit architecture with FPU. Using 64-bit means carrying around 32 usually-excess high-order bits of sign-extension, though I'll also admit that it's a minor performance penalty. Once you need 64-bit, you really need it, and then it shines. But if you analyze what you do, most of us really don't. It's main value is in geek ego.
On the other hand, at work I do LSI CAD, where I need 64-bits, need large RAM, and use software that just isn't available any more in 32-bit versions. A decade or more ago, a friend quipped/quoted, "The only reason to have a 64-bit processor is to design 64-bit processors." I'll now grant that nuclear and environmental simulation can fit on that list too, as well as some (but really not that many) other applications. I guess there are some 64-bit games now, or at least game tools. But then again, many modern games are really simulations, when you come right down to it.
But really the penalty for using 64-bit is small, and the geek ego boost for running it is large.
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Gentoo on AMD64
)