Does such thing exist?
from what I have been reading some plug ins that are only 32bit can be problematic to get running in 64bit. SuSE seems to have less trouble than others because of the one click installations.
Is there some sort of guide, pointers etc for new 64bit converts to use. I’m planning to upgrade my system to 6GB for Xmas.
Thanks
mejason69 wrote:
>
> Does such thing exist?
>
> from what I have been reading some plug ins that are only 32bit can be
> problematic to get running in 64bit. SuSE seems to have less trouble
> than others because of the one click installations.
>
> Is there some sort of guide, pointers etc for new 64bit converts to
> use. I’m planning to upgrade my system to 6GB for Xmas.
>
>
> Thanks
>
>
I’m not sure there’s any issues that haven’t been resolved, at least for me. The main plugin issues are there is no 64bit Java browser plugin though Konqueror somehow can run java applets and you can run 32bit FF and Opera if you wish but that causes issues with the media plugins (iirc), Flash 10 is now available in 64bit and for Acrobat there’s nspluginwrapper for FireFox (Opera has the plugin wrapper builtin).
If you have any issues after the upgrade just Google or post
Suse 11.0 x64, Kde 4.1beta (factory repo), Opera 9.x weekly
Konqueror in KDE runs Java directly, not via a plugin, so there’s no 64-bit issue (though implementation of applets may be a different story). It will also use native rendering for .pdf (kpdf or okular), and now with the 64-bit Flash plugin, you can have a 64-bit browser without having the hangups of 32-bit plugins for most requirements.
Though, I must admit, the flash plugin still needs a bit of work from the Konq team for proper integration, but it’s still a big step.
Just my 2c…
Cheers,
KV
Are you running on a laptop, and do you know if laptop hardware support under 64 bit openSUSE significantly different?
Does anyone else have any thoughts on the general state of 64 bit OS? Is it worthwhile even for systems with <4 GB RAM?
I’m probably going to do a fresh install on my laptop when 11.1 is released, and I’m slowly getting my desktop ready for a fresh install as well. (The desktop is a bigger headache since I’ve got multiple drives in multiple partitions with multiple filesystems since it was my “oohh let’s try this” box for a long time, and I’m going to blow away/streamline a lot of that.)
I’m toying with moving to 64 bit on both, but not entirely clear on the real world benefits or current state of the tech WRT openSUSE. Are there 64 bit ports for most everything (even down to eyecandy like cairo-dock) and/or can 32bit apps be run with relative ease if required?
I’ll be sticking with GNOME for now if that’s a factor at all…
I haven’t run into a single program yet that I wanted to use but couldn’t due to having a 64 bits version of openSUSE. If there is a 32 bit version, there will be a 64 bit version.
As expected since every single cpu from the last 2 years is probably 64 bits ? I don’t see any reason to run a 32 bit OS if your CPU is 64 bits. If wikipedia is right it’s been available since 2003 which seems to be more than enough time to get things done right.
Interestingly, nearly every Linux forum I’ve participated in during the past year and a half, since shifting my personal computing (nearly) entirely to Linux has had more than a couple of threads lamenting that this or that didn’t work quite write with the 64 bit version of whateverdistro. I’m just curious whether there are still likely issues and whether there are any real world benefits to offset those potential issues. (Will my RAW image processing lag a bit less, etc…)
Thanks for the info, and I hope you are right.
converted wrote:
Suse 11.0 x64, Kde 4.1beta (factory repo), Opera 9.x weekly
The majority of the problems are to do with non-open source software like Adobe Flash (recently fixed with the release of 64-bit Flash), the need to use NDIS drivers only available in 32-bit, 32-bit Java plugin requiring a 32-bit browser and so forth. So you will see some issues around the edges but by and large 64-bit Linux and the open source software around it is stable and complete and has been for a few years. You can still run 32-bit programs like Skype and OpenSUSE has one of the best setups for dual architecture libraries.
I’m also curious about 64-bit OpenSUSE. I have 4gb of RAM and I’m using an Intel E6600. Are there any real noticeable advantages to using a 64-bit OS over a 32-bit OS? Will a 32-bit OS recognize all 4gb or RAM?
Recently
Adobe released Flash 10 native 64bit Firefox plugin as an Alpha on Linux first (the justification was because Linuxes 64bit user base was larger, had more mature tools and applications, and that they had shown the most demand for 64bit plugin).
Sun, released 64bit java for browser under Linux & Vista, but not Solaris (apparently there’s no 64bit browswer there heheeheh).
So as others have said, software developers have had long enough now, for main issues to be resolved, or in process of resolving, thanks to the relatively large Linux 64 bit basse.
So whilst I installed 32 bit OS-10.3 on this box last year, it’s 64 bits from now on. Thanks to those who blazed the trail.
yes, especially in number crunching and multimedia. For example, x264 runs 10-15% faster on 64-bit than on 32-bit. Xvid is also a bit faster too
Will a 32-bit OS recognize all 4gb or RAM?
yes
You can install 32 bit Linux -pae kernel which uses Intel Page Address Extentsions to make memory above 4GiB accessible. But unless you have a 1GiB graphics card, it’s not worth the bother, the kernel has extra work managing that last few hundred KiB, and must allocate buffers in particular areas for certain devices.
Linux kernel reserves 1GiB for itself, and 3GiB of the 32bit adress space for user processes (applications like the Gimp).
As on this box, it’s very rare all memory is used, I installed the -default kernel after a while and dropped the 10.3 “bigsmp” kernel, which over-sized many data structures and only provided access to a few extra hundred KiB main memory after booting.
64 bit, has a number of advantages :
Will you notice much different? I don’t think so, unless you run benchmarks or much CPU intensive work.
Lately I tested 11.1-RC1 on dual Celeron 450 Mhz box, and speedwise it was fine, the difference was the CPUs were often working 40-60% of time, rather than the 5-10% I am used to.
I mostly use my machine for vmware, running 3 servers at a time.
It is a dual core laptop with 4gb ram.
Would this sort of work see any improvement? I suspect my biggest bottleneck is the HDD as it gets thrashed a lot when powering machines up and down.
Still waiting for the SSD prices to come down.
Does anyone know if I would see any benefit going to 64bit?
Is there a 64bit version of VMware Workstation?
What about virtualbox under 64bit, I understand you can convert your vmware machines onto this.
Thanks for any info.
sideshow wrote:
>
> I mostly use my machine for vmware, running 3 servers at a time.
>
> It is a dual core laptop with 4gb ram.
>
> Would this sort of work see any improvement? I suspect my biggest
> bottleneck is the HDD as it gets thrashed a lot when powering machines
> up and down.
64 bits may not stop the thrashing but the rest of the os will feel a little bit zippier as the apps will be compiled for 64bits, I am still mourning the death of my 64bit machine due to a lightning strike earlier this year, money is tight at the moment but after the holidays look out 
>
> Still waiting for the SSD prices to come down.
>
> Does anyone know if I would see any benefit going to 64bit?
You will be using the full potential of your hardware which is a good-thing™ ;-0
>
> Is there a 64bit version of VMware Workstation?
>
> What about virtualbox under 64bit, I understand you can convert your
> vmware machines onto this.
Plus if the CPU is AMD then it has the advantage of running 32bit apps naively ( as long as you have the 32bit libs installed as well as the 64bit stuff ) so no probs.
HTH
–
Mark…
Nil illegitimi carborundum
I run a lot of vmware stuff on my box, testing, training etc. Often I have 4 or 5 servers running at once in a team, and always have a Vista vm running for work purposes.
I tried running these on a 32 bit version of opensuse with the kernel loaded to see my 4GB RAM. I thought the performance was okay.
Later, I went 64 bit, same vm’s, same physical box, same version of opensuse. I found a huge difference in performance of the vm’s on the 64 bit OS.
Plugins were the only issue, but now are not. Both flash and Java now have genuine 64 bit versions and both work fine.
I have come accross minor issues when testing other software, such as Scalix email server where it is looking for 32 bit versions of certain libs when installing on a sles 64 bit machine. It seems this is known issue and Scalix are addressing it.
Go 64 bit, you’ll be glad you did.
Cheers, Peter.