What are the disadvantages of installing the 32bit version of Suse11.1 on new 64bit Hardware?
I currently run 64bit Suse 11.1 KDE4 on my new Dell Precision M4400 Laptop. This is my machine that I use for work, so it should be stable, but there are numerous problems.
So I think about reinstalling 11.1, 32bit with KDE3 again.
While most crashes and problems are likely due to KDE4, I also have trouble using Java, since there is no 64bit browser-plug-in in the repositories for Sun-Java and I resort using OpenJDK due to other troubles.
Since I need the Java-plugin for work occasionally, I currently resort to Windows for these task now, which is very disappointing, since it all worked fine using Suse 10.3 on my old laptop.
To be overly critical dual cores have nothing to do with it. Having > 4
GB RAM in your system will be best-utilized with a 64-bit box regardless
of the processors involved.
The biggest disadvantage I can think of for running 32-bit on 64-bit
hardware isā¦ you have 64-bit hardware. You will not get full
performance out of it (potentially increased performance when doing
numeric calculations with high-precision or large numbers) unless you
utilize all for which you have paid. Still, while I consider 64-bit
completely ready for prime time, some people have experienced problems
as mentioned, though I think most of them have been overcome. My SLED
10 SP2 x86_64 system that I use for everything doesnāt have any problems
at all with Java/Flash/networking/etc. so I canāt complain.
Good luck.
caf4926 wrote:
> You will probably find things generally work better using 32bit.
> Certainly some aspects of Java.
>
> There are no real disadvantages - But you start to benefit from _64
> duel coreās when you have 4GB+ RAM
>
>
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>
> WHAT ARE THE DISADVANTAGES OF INSTALLING THE 32BIT VERSION OF SUSE11.1
> ON NEW 64BIT HARDWARE?
>
> I currently run 64bit Suse 11.1 KDE4 on my new Dell Precision M4400
> Laptop. This is my machine that I use for work, so it should be
> stable, but there are numerous problems.
>
> So I think about reinstalling 11.1, 32bit with KDE3 again.
>
> While most crashes and problems are likely due to KDE4, I also have
> trouble using Java, since there is no 64bit browser-plug-in in the
> repositories for Sun-Java and I resort using OpenJDK due to other
> troubles.
>
> Since I need the Java-plugin for work occasionally, I currently resort
> to Windows for these task now, which is very disappointing, since it
> all worked fine using Suse 10.3 on my old laptop.
>
>
I think that there now is a 64bit browser plugin http://java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/6u12.html
I think that there now is a 64bit browser plugin Java SE 6 Update 12 Release Notes.
Yes, I did see that, but since there is still no SUSE repository containing it, then there a likely troubles (at least in my past 5 years Suse experience, but then again I am a point-and-click-and-never-outside-yast-user).
There is a thread here that annouces the availability in November2008, followed by problem reports, etc.
I was using _64 for the last couple of years and managed fine. But now Iām using 32bit. I canāt see any real drop in performance. But I only have 2GB RAM. I do quite a bit of encoding too, but still get good performance.
Considering that an install takes about 30mins. And if you can download the dvd .iso easily - Just try it and see.
Your kernel choice of course for 4GB should default to PAE. Just FYI.
Wonderful how we just toss around phrases like that these days. When I
started programming 31 years ago, our super-computer had one whole MiB. And
I think it cost about a pound a byte. Mind you, it was upgraded a year or
two afterwards to a massive 2MiB.
ā
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
How do I exactly do that? If I click on kernel-pae in YAST->Software, I get all sorts of messages until it deselects kernel-pae again. Searching for PAE at en.opensuse.org does not seem to give useful results.
Will I still need this if I indeed switch to 32bit?
You wonāt notice too much in normal use, which will often depend on disk access and such.
I think it makes sense, to try to install KDE 3 on the 64 bit first, and see if issues are due to KDE 4 / video issues.
I found -pae kernels pretty pointless unless you have large memory graphics card. The difference on a few 100 KiB in 4 GiB is just too small.
Canāt the Java plugin use 32 bit, like with Adobe Flash which provides nice insulation of Browser against the plugin crashing as it runs in a different process.
Iām not sure _64 isnāt a dead endā¦ I mean, as long as an integer is 32, that is.
I run 32-bit on a _64 machine and it is a lot simpler to find drivers, etc. for new hardware items. I donāt have to work-around or use experimental flash or any of that nonsense.
I donāt even notice a difference in performance between 32 and 64, so if Iām giving up something, I consider a fair trade.
What experimental flash? We are using the same flash plugin as everybody else, thanks to nspluginwrapper. When the 64-bit plugin is stable, we can use that too. Things have changed. Get up to date.
I am also considering 32 bit (and i do have 8GBmemory), i also didnāt encounter any performance issues but again, iām just an average user.
What i do like with 32 bit is that You donāt need any compatibility packages and since ext3 is really horrible with small files i consider it a downside to install 32 bit packages. And since most of the world still runs on 32 bit then itās the right way to go (for now) but i remember many threads if someone should choose 32 or 64 bit rotfl! Until developers of most apps wonāt āforceā 64 bit versions to be made first then we will have to live with being āworseā
About that experimental flash Itās more stable being an alpha release than the stable 32 bit release in nspluginwrapper
Keep in mind to take advantage of a full eight GB RAM you need the PAE
kernel which imposes a performance hit by default (unavoidable
regardless of the platform you use). Having a few hundred megabytes
(potentially) of 32-bit libraries will probably cause less loss than
using PAE unless youāre using a really poor filesystem, and there will
probably be a need to support both architectures in 64-bit-land for a
few years yet while everybody makes the move.
Good luck.
BenderBendingRodriguez wrote:
> I am also considering 32 bit (and i do have 8GBmemory), i also didnāt
> encounter any performance issues but again, iām just an average user.
> What i do like with 32 bit is that You donāt need any compatibility
> packages and since ext3 is really horrible with small files i consider
> it a downside to install 32 bit packages. And since most of the world
> still runs on 32 bit then itās the right way to go (for now) but i
> remember many threads if someone should choose 32 or 64 bit rotfl! Until
> developers of most apps wonāt āforceā 64 bit versions to be made first
> then we will have to live with being āworseā
>
> About that experimental flash Itās more stable being an alpha
> release than the stable 32 bit release in nspluginwrapper
>
>
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I understand everyone says that there is a performance hit when using 32 bit kernel with PAE but for now i havenāt felt any downsides. Recently i was encoding 10 movies at once on C2Q (32 bit PAE) and i had no real problems with performance. Maybe if i would run benchmarks then there might be a slight difference in favour of 64 bit version but as i say, iād need to see some benchmarks.
lol, if you are encoding movies, you really should consider using 64bit as both Xvid 1.2 and x264 are faster, in case of x264, up to 15% compared to the 32bit version
Ehhh, faster, better stronger, reminds me of drag races and big kids showing off I donāt care about the speed
If i would then i would have the i7 Intel CPU and nothing to eat lol!
As i said, iām just an average user so i wonāt really see any differences. Iāll try 64 bit again with 11.2 until that time 32 bit it is If you say that there is such performance increase then iāll look for it just out of curiosity.
Not only I say it, but itās also been confirmed by the x264 devs themselves (Dark Shikari and pengvado), the doom9 forum and many other places. Fact is, x264 is ~15% faster on 64bit linux
It may be because x264 uses those additional registers where other apps might not use them so itās probably just x264 and other media en/decoding apps (heavy use of registers? ). Otherwise i bet there are no advantages though iād like to see a 64 bit system compared with a 32 bit PAE hmmm.
Iāll ask for such benchmark at phoronix, maybe theyāll make some benchmarks, that would be great to see this.
Itās more stable being an alpha release than the stable 32 bit release in nspluginwrapper