Well, this is kind of old. But it makes me mad every time.
Last time i installed Skype and since i have a friend who insist i have to use it, well i use it.
But Skype on Linux can be pain. That is, if you are lazy and don’t want to install afterwords more libs.
And i wonder, why i am seeing this again in Linux what i have seen under Windows. So there are companies that want you to use their service or product, but most times you are either forced to use Windows or their 64bit effort is lackluster at best.
Makes me somewhat tired and i really think if i just install 32bit next time just to avoid to be an install jokey.
This thread might be a little useless since there is no answer to it, but i really wonder how many programs you installed and thought, oh boy what do i need now?
Under Windows long time ago, i got Vista pretty quick and of course, because i believe in progress, i got 64bit edition. But most of the addons from programs and drivers where mostly 32bit. So you endet up with an 64bit system and running 32bit software. Wow, thats great.
Now i know that companies don’t like to invest in progress unless everyone else runs the next evolutionary software.
I guess my bottom line is, as a lame user, that i always thought that you convert just a program to 64bit libs from lets say 32bit. Might be a more difficult task i assume.
I hope we don’t see 128 bit. Not sure how long it takes companies like skype to offer a real 128 bit software.
p.s. i know that you can install missing pieces to get most of the stuff working. But i wished no one had to do that.
I totally agree with You. What’s more this is why IMHO 64bit is useful only for computer games or servers. Computer games because that’s the only place where an average desktop user can utilize more than 4GB of RAM and servers for the obvious reasons. For other purposes 64bit generates nothing but trouble (again my personal opinion). Still the support is much better with 64bit today that it used to be in the past but it sure is far from being perfect.
For me, I am not realy interested in 32-bits, 48-bits or 64-bits (I started my computer career using a system with 39-bits word length), as long as it runs what I want it to to.
My 84+ year old mother uses a 64-bit openSUSE-11.3 with Skype, and so do I. We chat a couple times a week.
… I concede I miss the point of the OPs first post. Are we doing something wrong for this to work for us on 64-bit ?
My view is with so many of the developers and packagers on 64-bit, we are now starting to see more problems with 32-bit. Case in point? 32-bit openSUSE-11.3 with nVidia proprietary driver and KDE-4.4.4 (where 64-bit does not have the problem).
I am new to 64-bit computing (just building my first Athlon II X2 3.3GHz system) but I tend to work within the confines of KDE which, I believe, works well in 64-bit.
The problematical packages, e.g. Flash and Skype, are proprietary and will probably require some degree of tweaking on both 32-bit and 64-bit to get them running correctly.
I think 64-bit is the future and, eventually, 32-bit will become secondary. As for 128-bit, I think we had that back in the early 1990s with the DEC Alpha but there was not much interest in it outside of academia.
>
> I totally agree with You. What’s more this is why IMHO 64bit is useful
> only for computer games or servers. Computer games because that’s the
> only place where an average desktop user can utilize more than 4GB of
> RAM and servers for the obvious reasons. For other purposes 64bit
> generates nothing but trouble (again my personal opinion). Still the
> support is much better with 64bit today that it used to be in the past
> but it sure is far from being perfect.
>
did you take into consideration that the evil nvidia-driver bug that’s hit
many seems to happen only on 32bit systems, not on 64bit?
Mm… my point was more ‘running out of the box’ with no problem.
For skype i needed to add this ‘#!/bin/bash
LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libv4l/v4l1compat.so skype’ so that i have video working. Without it, i have no video.
Ok, its Beta.
No, i don’t have always problems with most of the programs. In fact, most works fine. There are of course some things that just run for some reason better under 32bit.
I think what i am crying about are the companies that do have closed software, where you need to run their software.
Also, the funny thing is that this happens to me and other people have not such problems at all. Maybe its my pc, we never will know.
I think what i am mostly concerned with is, that i wished it would work upon installation without tweaking the software. I invest some time to solve problems, but at one point i just give up.
Indeed that is true for some company’s and not for others. For Skype, I found it easiest to install a Skype rpm first from a repository in the build service, which will ensure that necessary dependencies are picked up. Then typically if one want’s to use the Skype version packaged by Skype themselves, only then (after installing the OBS skype) one can update to the Skype packaged version it will work. That’s a very simple method and needs special commands nominally.
In your case, the v4l preload command you note is very much specific to your webcam. My experience is the BEST WEBCAM experience comes with a UVC compatible webcam. The webcams that use the gspca driver are simply IMHO not as good. I blame that on hardware selection. Get yourself a decent UVC compatible webcam ! (of course I concede this is a biased subjective view).
I note the 64-bit packages of both “nx” and “Virtual Box” that are on their respective developer sites work well with openSUSE and can be downloaded and installed directly. Very simple for them. So for 64-bit on websites does work well in some cases.
And as noted in this thread, 32-bit KDE users are to a certain extent struggling with annoying problems on openSUSE KDE with the proprietary nVidia driver and their openUSE KDE. 64-bit openSUSE KDE does not have the problem. I see us now at a cross roads, where 64-bit is actually having less problems than 32-bit. Of course being at a cross roads, means one see’s problems in both.
Well, my webcam was a present and it is a MS cam. Not bad really. Works fine. Just needs that command string.
Just for fun, i will install next time 32bit just to experience it or to see if i have any problems. Like i mentioned, everything else works fine.
I use wine to some extent and yes, it does give one the option to run MS software. Works in some cases, in others not or not as good. I used to tweak a lot, but now i am in the position that i just want things to work. Perhaps if you get older you don’t want to waste a lot of time.
Once i have some money to throw around i will look into another cam for sure. For the time being it has to be this one. I will keep the word in mind (UVC) have to look it up. Never stumbled across.
Spread the word amongst those who might give you presents that you are a very special guy and use Linux, and that you thus only realy appreciate hardware that runs with open software. Then you may hope that next time they ask you what you would like to have, or at least buy you something you may change in the shop for a decent one. rotfl!
This is one of the Linux sites associated with the UVC webcam: Linux UVC driver & tools … UVC standing for “USB Video Class”. You may even see the occasional Logitech webcam in the local shop that claims “UVC” compatible on its packaging (although not many have that note even though many are UVC compatible). There is a very activing mailing list that provides superb UVC webcam compatible support.
Some years back I gave my mother a webcam that used the GSPCA driver, and last year I made a point of replacing it with a different (non-GSPCA driver) webcam. IMHO the GSPCA driver support/hardware combination is not as good as that of the UVC … again … that is subjective opinion.
This is the ONLY problem I’ve ever had for the last two years with 64bit (any distro). My logitech cam needs this to work, but is a skype bug. It works fine with google talk, cheese and kopete.
No I haven’t (I wasn’t aware of that at all) but in terms of such problems 32bit seems to be winning IMHO
64bit Flash and Skype (2 problems) vs 32bit nVidia driver bug.
Don’t take me wrong. I’ve got nothing against openSUSE 64bit and 64bit operating systems in general as it runs great and smooth here (with Skype and 64bit Flash beta) and it’s the future for sure. It’s just that for what I’m doing on openSUSE (and probably most average openSUSE users) I don’t need 64bits at all. Win7 64bit is my choice for a gaming rig all the way as well and that’s what I’m using at the moment.
In my case, I don’t have a PC with 16 GB ! My old laptop has 1.2 GB, my sandbox PC 1GB, and my backup desktop PC 2GB. Our Linux User Group (LUG) laptop has only 512MB of RAM. The hard drive’s on some of these PCs is small.
But our newer laptop (Dell Studio 1537) has 4GB, my Core i7 920 6GB RAM, and my wife’s new Core i7 860 6GB of RAM. That amount of RAM makes testing of milestone releases much better, as one can boot to the liveCD for a number of days, install software (into the RAM), install the kernel source with C++ and make, switch to run level 3 (via init 3) and build the proprietary driver (the hardway) and switch back to run level-5 to test the driver, etc … all sorts of testing in RAM that simply can not be done on an older PC with less RAM, unless one has space on the hard drive of those PCs. By testing milestone releases (and also writing bug reports where necessary) one ensures there is a higher probability a new openSUSE release will work on one’s PC.
Of course, being able to keep up a reasonable speed with many applications open and running at the same time is also a big advantage of more memory.
I can easily consume 6-8GB with my work virtual machines alone, top that with video streaming/editing/conversion and various other things that I do at the same time, my usual memory usage clocks around 10-11GB on any given day - sure I could reduce it but that would mean moving some of the VMs to other systems/real physical hardware.
You don’t have to convince me that RAM is very useful. I’ve learned that the hard way long time ago when I bought Radeon 9600, which was great at that time, and didn’t invest enough in RAM. However, I think that the compile time would be pretty much the same when using 32bit PAE enabled kernel (please correct me if I’m wrong). What’s more I think the amount of data You can store on the RAM drive will also be the same whether You’re using 32bit PAE enabled kernel or 64bit. Anyway I’m really not sure that an average user run their main OS from a live CD or USB.
I think this is a very good example of something a 32bit OS won’t do as smooth as 64bit. Thanks for posting but I think this is a very non standard desktop usage example. Most would probably classify your computer as a server rather than a desktop and again I find this example as something not for an average user. Most people in Poland won’t be even able to afford this type of hardware and I think it’s generally more or less true all over the world.
I don’t think I would want to waste my time with a 32-bit openSUSE with 4GB or more of RAM. Too many things that IMHO would not have been tested properly. Almost all developers and packagers now use 64-bit PCs. Hence for the sort of testing I suggested (using a liveCD with 4GB or more of RAM) I would prefer 64-bit. But if you can do such testing with 32-bit, then good-on-ya as we need 32-bit testers (as there are now fewer and fewer 32-bit testers).
Now back to 64-bit vs 32-bit. I do a lot of video rendering, and with respect, 32-bit is simply NOT as fast as 64-bit when it comes to video rendering. Its not uncommon for me to launch a batch job, using 6 to 7 of my 8 virtual CPU’s on my Intel Core i7 920 PC, that will run for 36 hours or more, stabilizing many videos.
It would be a LOT slower (relative to the large time for the batch job to complete) for 32-bit compared to 64-bit. Hence I definitely prefer 64 bit there.
I’m not saying 64-bit does not have problems, but I am now convinced we will see more and more 32-bit problems than we will see 64-bit problems. IMHO the pendulum has swung, and 32-bit is now starting to be on the way out and starting to have more problems than 64-bit.
If your complaining about 64 bit, then get ready for 128 bit operating systems. Microsoft is already developing 128 bit; Windows 8. Adobe has a flash player download for 128 bit Linux.
My old laptop has 1.2 GB, my sandbox PC 1GB, and my backup desktop PC 2GB. Our Linux User Group (LUG) laptop has only 512MB of RAM. The hard drive’s on some of these PCs is small.