AMD64 or not ?

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Toady · Post by **Toady** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 7:46 pm

This might sound like a stupid question, but as a 32bit Gentoo user who has 64bit hardware available (I too have an M65 - but mine has a crappy CPU without 64bit support) on my workstation - what advantage would I have moving to 64bit ?

I do fairly standard desktop / internet realted things on here - nothing too serious in all honesty - is there any point switching over ? (in my case)

OldTango · Post by **OldTango** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 11:51 pm

Toady wrote:This might sound like a stupid question, but as a 32bit Gentoo user who has 64bit hardware available (I too have an M65 - but mine has a crappy CPU without 64bit support) on my workstation - what advantage would I have moving to 64bit ?

I do fairly standard desktop / internet realted things on here - nothing too serious in all honesty - is there any point switching over ? (in my case)

I think this is really a personal choice. 64bit systems are here to stay and software is widely available for it. As for Gentoo I have both amd64 and x86 computers working and all of them are very stable and quite fast. I have no more problems on my 64bit workstation then I have on the x86 machines and the problems that crop up on either of the systems, is extremely rare anymore. My use of my 64bit dual processor workstation is very much like your's and I wouldn't go back to 32bit for any reason. I do like to play games a lot, most of which are 32bit and run very well on my workstation. There can be a steep learning curve, depending on the individuals knowledge of Gentoo.

The bigger demand for 64bit the more support there will be and the faster it will happen. So the more folks using it, the better...........

Crono81 · Post by **Crono81** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 7:52 pm

azarro wrote:
depontius wrote:
......

But this week I've about had it. At the moment flash doesn't work, and I can't get nspluginwrapper to recognize it and install it. I get:
Code: Select all
localhost portage # nspluginwrapper -i /usr/lib32/nsbrowser/plugins/libflashplayer.so 
nspluginwrapper: no appropriate viewer found for /usr/lib32/nsbrowser/plugins/libflashplayer.so
in spite of the fact that both packages have been freshly installed.
Have you managed to solve this problem? A few days ago my flash was working flawlessly and suddenly nspluginwrapper doesn't work anymore, no matter which version of netscape-flash / nspluginwrapper I use :-/

I had problems too. Managed to get the plugin working by reinstalling all the 32 emul libs and doing:
revdep-rebuild -X --library libexpat.so.0

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 9:44 pm

AMD64 yes or not?

NO!!

At least if you need java, flash and so on...

Next holidays I'll reinstall with 32bit!!! After stage 4.....

thumper · Post by **thumper** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 10:28 pm

If they could just come out with a 64bit java plugin, I'd be happy, but without it, I'm really getting tired of having to close firefox to open firefox-bin for places I need it, and given that I use Konqueror for most of my broswing, it does not help that it cannot do a forth of what either firefox or firefox-bin do, and to some extent the reverse thus requiring all 3 to be available to cover all bases.... argh....

Going back to 32bit over the next holiday does not sound so bad.

George

OldTango · Post by **OldTango** » Wed Dec 12, 2007 11:15 pm

Forgive me, but I am quite confused by these posts.

bandreabis wrote:AMD64 yes or not?
NO!! At least if you need java, flash and so on...

thumper wrote:If they could just come out with a 64bit java plug-in, I'd be happy, but without it, I'm really getting tired of having to close firefox to open firefox-bin for places I need it.

I grant you that at one time in the past I had troubles with flash and java enabled sites around the web. I also used firefox-bin to get around the problem. However I removed firefox-bin some time ago and no longer run any 32bit browsers on my amd64 system.

Here are the browser I use the most, in my preferred order.

Code: Select all

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071207 SeaMonkey/1.1.7
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071207 Firefox/2.0.0.11

Now, I don't build any java or flash applications or test them, but I haven't found a website that uses java or flash that I can't view or use with my current setup in a long time now..

So unless I am misunderstanding what you all are saying the problem is, there has to be something else wrong. At least point me to some place I can see or experience the problems myself.......

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 6:56 am

I'm not using -bin firefox, I'm using nspluginwrapper and it works quite well... but it crashes too much often, and I have to restart the browser.
That's what I hate... but I'm going to keep a backup of my 64bit system for better days.

Or I've a half idea to put 64bit on an external HD.

Java and flash are the only two problem that make me think about 32bit.

Cyker · Post by **Cyker** » Thu Dec 13, 2007 10:06 pm

Generally speaking, there is NO point switching from 32-bit to 64-bit or vice versa.

Unless you actually have a compelling reason, changing from one to the other will only yield a faint disappointment at the near-complete lack of difference between the two

Compelling reasons for using one or the other currently stand as:

Reasons for using 64-bits:
You are dealing with really big numbers (e.g. cryptography, advanced compression systems, academia)
You need to address lots and lots of RAM (i.e. more than 3.5GB, which is the rough limit of 32-bit; Uses are things like huge databases, excessive image and video manipulation, some 3D/CAD stuff).

Reason for using 32-bit:
You use 32-bit binaries unsupported by Gentoo (e.g. Just Plain unsupported, or bleeding-edge stuff that portage always lags behind with)
You need to interoperate with 32-bit binaries (64-bit code can't talk to 32-bit code directly, and vice versa)

If you only use source-based stuff in Portage, 64 or 32-bits is virtually the same, right down to all the hacky kludgearound crap (Partly why the kernel devs are beginning to re-merge x86 and AMD64 in the next kernel versions).

Performance is not significantly different (Curiously, despite the extra registers, 64-bits is not noticable faster than 32-bit except when dealing with data structures bigger than 32-bits, but I consider these fringe cases, in the same way that I consider benchmarks where 32-bits has been shown to be (also marginally) faster than 64-bit to also be fringe cases (These were benchmarks with very latency-sensitive ops)).

So to summarize: Not worth changing unless you have an actual reason.

Now, if the 64-bit core was Itanium-based (And more mature than it is now...) then things would be more interesting

thumper · Post by **thumper** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 12:42 am

If you don't have a java plugin, does the demo on this page work?
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/

I like simple viewer, this was first to come to mind, but it works in Konqueror, and firefox-bin, but not firefox 64.

Not appearing java related.
fckediter/tinymce works in firefox(s) not konqueror.

apple.com/trailers (I have a child who loves to look at trailers)
konqueror (kmplayer) yes, firefox (mplayer-plugin) yes, firefox-bin no

It's more a point of I only want to use ONE!, I use Konqueror for most, hit a page that does not work right, try firefox, oops, try firefox-bin.

It's just getting friggin old, and yes I know konqueror will likely never work with the editors, but then in 32-bit, I believe firefox works in all cases.

There are other examples, I'm to lazy to actually keep a list....

You know what would be cool, if the OS knew or could learn what sites worked on what browsers and automatically switched the browser to the right one when opening the link.

George

OldTango · Post by **OldTango** » Fri Dec 14, 2007 4:10 am

thumper wrote:If you don't have a java plugin, does the demo on this page work?
http://www.airtightinteractive.com/simpleviewer/

Both SimpleViewer Demo 1 - Hi-Res images and SimpleViewer Demo 2 - Lo-Res images work in both of my browsers perfectly, but this was really no surprise to me at all.

By the way, thanks for the link, that program may be just what I have been looking for to handle a load of images on a site of mine................

drwook · Post by **drwook** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 11:37 am

Java - I use blackdown-jdk's plugin (use flag nsplugin, you need to unmask the flag as it is profile masked, but works fine for me until Sun/gcj/whatever gets a better plugin out)

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:21 pm

drwook wrote:Java - I use blackdown-jdk's plugin (use flag nsplugin, you need to unmask the flag as it is profile masked, but works fine for me until Sun/gcj/whatever gets a better plugin out)

How to unmask it?

drwook · Post by **drwook** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 12:49 pm

create /etc/portage/profile/package.use.mask and add the line 'dev-java/blackdown-jdk -nsplugin'

bandreabis · Post by **bandreabis** » Sun Dec 16, 2007 1:03 pm

drwook wrote:create /etc/portage/profile/package.use.mask and add the line 'dev-java/blackdown-jdk -nsplugin'

Grazie!

xoxo_davide · Post by **xoxo_davide** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 6:23 pm

I have a 32 bit compiled laptop and a pure amd 64 bit system at work. No multilib installed, not even 32 bit emul in the kernel. It works perfetctly, and it is faster then running 32 bit code on a native 64 bit processor. But i am a developer, and at work i am not interested in seeing flash sites or banners, i don't need to run wine or to install pre-packed bin programs, neither to play quake or install from unstable branch. What i need is an ultra stable system that takes the most from its processor and subsystem. But at home i like to install and uninstall crap, take a look at youtube videos, and so on.
So what do you want from your pc? That's just the only question that gives the usefull answer.

AMD64 or not ?

Depends on the use you make of it