thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

[Kuroyume]

i am currently running the 32bit version, but i have been thinking of moving to 64 bit... however, i have read that there are some thngs that don't work... yet i have not seen an exhaustive list of those... can you give me a hand and help me prepare for the move?

basically i need 2 things:

- Knowing what doesn't work

- Knowing how to fix it...

once i know the first, i guess the second will not be too hard...

thanks...

[dibl]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

I have experience with 32-bit Kubuntu Feisty and 64-bit Ubuntu Feisty. I would advise caution -- there are very few advantages, today, in the 64-bit version. One advantage is processor-intensive tasks where a 64-bit package is available. I'm doing some audio file work (converting old records to digital) using Audacity and Gnome Wave Cleaner, on my dual-core X6800 CPU, with 4 GB of RAM, and for those tasks I'm getting good results. But there are very few 64-bit "consumer" packages available yet. A lot of non-repository packages do an environment check before they install, and many of them will refuse to install once they see the 64-bit environment. Examples are Shockwave Flash and Google Earth (but you can get Google Earth 64-bit from Medibuntu).

The Nivida driver doesn't work as well in 64-bit, Beryl doesn't work reliably, -- the list goes on and on. 32-bit Kubuntu Feisty is the "sweet spot" on my platform -- everything is working great on that one.

Hope this is useful for your deliberations ...

[heinkel_111]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

I think you might be wrong about google earth. I have not checked yet in Feisty, but in Edgy the installer worked "right out of the box" from google. I did not download from any repository.

I have not experienced 64-bit specific nvidia problems afaik. I don't need beryl. I tried it, and yeah, it was unstable so I will deinstall it and wait until our development and testing team recommends kubuntu with beryl instead of k window manager. I thing beryl was a very gnomeish experience and I like KDE better. That is why I have kubuntu.

Windows media files used to not play at all or only play sound and of course the DRM thing is a problem but so is it on 32-bit, right?
I was surprised to see when running feisty that some .wmv version 9 files seem to play very well in kaffeine.
The only 3 things that has me really pissed of about 64 bit on a home pc right now is:
Flash (you need a grade 3 konqueror hack to make it work).
Games (some linux FPS games are not available as 64-bit binaries).
Realplayer (or just real64 codecs, please)

As you see, the problems lies mostly on the entertainement side, but we shall not forget that movies/animations/youtube etc are actually an important source of information these days and it is rapidly increasing in importance.

(My experience: using mostly 64 bit kubuntu for 1 year, but I have a 32 bit machine that i ssh to when needed).

[dibl]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

Google Earth for 64-bit is available from the Medibuntu repository, which must be manually added to your Feisty sources list.

[Fintan]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

Skype doesn't have a 64bit version yet.

I hope this points you in the right direction for other stuff not running on 64bit.
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3082007.0

I hope this helps and enjoy

[Detonate]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

I'm running 32 on a 64 dual core system. I think that if I wanted to run some processor intensive programs, like dibl is doing, I would install the 64 bit version on a separate partition and dual boot. Use the 32 for everyday stuff, and boot to the 64 for that processor intensive stuff. Of course this assumes disk space is not an issue.

[MepisReign]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

I'm running 32 on a 64 dual core system. I think that if I wanted to run some processor intensive programs, like dibl is doing, I would install the 64 bit version on a separate partition and dual boot. Use the 32 for everyday stuff, and boot to the 64 for that processor intensive stuff. Of course this assumes disk space is not an issue.

That is what I did, I have Kubuntu 32 bits in one partition and kubuntu 64 bits on another partition, the first one is to run 32 bits apps and the other one is for tovid (video editing). The video driver on the 64 bits side works pretty much the same.

Regards

MepisReign

[Feirefis]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

I installed 64 bit Feisty on a small partition next to 32 bit Dapper, just to play with. It has turned into my main working system. In Dapper I had trouble with Beagle and could not easily install alternatives for document search because of dependency problems but in 64, Beagle works perfectly.
Google Earth installed easily and my Nvidia card runs better with Feisty.
Best of all, in Dapper I had to set up VMWare server manually but in Feisty 64 it is a simple package install.
I don't do much video so can't say how that would be. I installed Rosegarden and it works fine which I could not do in Dapper 32.
Worth trying 64!
Oh, I did have a go with Automatix as this was a spare partition and risked nothing. It did not break anything but failed to install some packages and I used Adept to complete the job.

Feirefis

[bootdoc]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

i installed feisty 64 on two systems. My amd 64 desktop and amd64 X2 laptop. Used automatix2 to install a whole bunch of stuff including swiftfox for the flash support. Be sure to install swiftfox before swiftfox plugins. No problems on either system. One thing that is a little frustrating is k3b takes a long time to flush cash after burning dvds on the laptop.

I use kino for capturing and editing video. Kmedia factory for authoring.

I had beryl running on dapper or edgy 64 but not on feisty. don't need it anyway. wireless worked OTB on the laptop .
Can't think of any reason not to run 64feisty!

[DMurray]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

If you are a regular user, the guys already mentioned the 2 most common problems: Skype and Flash. Both have a workaround and thus run on a 64bit Linux.
Beryl and Compiz work fine on the 64bit Ubuntus I have tried. Everything runs fine in my box, so it will run on yours too.
And what is important: 64bit software won't evolve if there are not enough people using.

[gigabz666]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

My last attempt with 64 bit OS's was Fedora Core 6. Had to say it wasn't a happy experience but from some of the stuff I read, I would be interested in running Kubuntu Feisty on 64bit. The only problem I have and the reason I am on 32 bit now is that a program I have to use in work has to run in 32 bit. I use Matlab Student Version for my PhD and when I contacted tech support, they said it doesn't run on 64bit. So that's why I'm not using it. Annoying really since that's the only thing holding me back.

[DMurray]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

It runs... My PhD used Neural Networks and it was fully implemented in Matlab. I have it running on an old version of Scientific Linux 64bit.
The undergraduation lab has 64bit machines with 64bit Ubuntu Feisty, all of them running Matlab.

[gigabz666]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

Are you sure it's Matlab Student and not just Matlab?

[sqlpython]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

I am running Kubuntu 7.04 amd64 on 4 machines and I love it.
For flash nspluginwrapper to run Flash, Adobe etc..
For other stuff the add on 32bit libs ia32-lib

Many vendors have 64bit versions Win4Lin and CrossOver just releasing.

Much better match for the Processor better response.

[MepisReign]

Re: thinking of migrating to 64bit: what are the possible difficulties?

After installing linux32 and ia32-libs you can add a 32 bits Konsole to the Desktop like this:
Right click on the Desktop
Choose Create New...Link to Application
On the Application tab, under Description type 32 bits Konsole
On the Command field type konsole -e linux32 /bin/bash
Choose an Icon and you are good to go

Regards,

MepisReign