Kubuntu and 64bit

[c_martini]

I began playing with Linux in 2000. I was getting fed up with the same old Windows problems that are too numerous and discussed to repeat here in this thread. My first Distro was Red Hat in 2000, but I was never able to get it installed or configured correctly, and I was one of the "just want it to work" masses, so dropped Linux until last year. Since then, I have been playing with Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu, Open SuSE, PCLInuxOS, Gentoo, Knoppix and others.

I have started to settle into using Kubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 part time as I still have Windows as my main o/s at the moment mainly for gaming.

I have recently carried out a major upgrade to my aging socket A/agp system to a newer socket 939/64 bit PCI-E system. (I would like to add here that replacing my motherboard, cpu and graphics card did not so much as make my Kubuntu installation blink and it found all my hardware and booted up with no problems whatsovever. I cannot say the same for Windows - ala-BSOD's, activation and all that crap).

Now that I have this nice 64 bit hardware, I was wondering what the Linux distros 64 bit editions have in adavantage over the 32 bit editions. My 32 bit Kubuntu is certainly faster on the new hardware. Would it be worth moving over to the 64 bit version? What are the considerations as far as application and driver compatibility? Forgive the nature of these questions as much of my fear and paranoia comes from being a long time Windows user (Old habits die hard)...

[askrieger]

Re: Kubuntu and 64bit

First of all, don't believe the vile canard that AMD64 is not suppoertec well by Kubuntu. About 98% of the packages available for 32 bit architectures are available for 64 bit. The unavailable packages are those that involve proprietary software that has not been compiled by the owners for 64 bit. These are mostly games and and restricted formats like Flash.

That said, unless you are doing heavily CPU intensive tasks, there is very little advantage at this point to using a 64 bit kernel. I suspect that you would notice very little additional advantage by switching, the primary advantage at this time (when there isn't reqally a great deal of AMD64 s/w) is the extra speed of the processor and you're seeing that already.

[c_martini]

Re: Kubuntu and 64bit - RE-EXAMINATION after nearly 2 years...

Nearly two years have now passed since that question was posed. I have now the opportunity at work to install whatever o/s I want on my newer Intel core 2 duo machine with 3 gigs of ram and Nvidia Quadro graphics. The machine came with Vista out of the box and has been running relatively trouble free (aside from obvious windows annoyances and unstable vnc to my mac on the left screen).

I would like to scrap Vista and run Hardy Heron. I would like to hear what people think about possibly running the 64 bit version and experiences of this. I do use the Adobe CS3 suite (Photoshop/Dreamweaver/Flash/Illustrator/Acrobat/Fireworks) at work so would have to run wine or Virtual Box for this, so all this must be taken into account and be supported in the 64 bit environment (I assume Virtual box can run 32 bit guest operating systems anyhow if necessary). I also run 2 screens (samsung sync master widescreen flat panels) with a vnc session to my mac on the left screen... Other than that, there is not much in the current Windows environment that cannot be substituted in the Linux environment anyhow.

Any issues I should be aware of before possibly taking the 64 bit plunge? Will 64 bit provide better performance with things like virtual Box and/or Wine running the adobe suite? How about multitasking? I am a web designer/developer and I usually run many apps at once and its common for me to have 6 to 10 apps open at the same time as I jump back and forth between tasks...