[PLUG] any reasons not to install a 64 bit specific distribution?

Jason R. Martin nsxfreddy at gmail.com
Thu Oct 27 19:05:20 UTC 2005


On 10/27/05, Galen Seitz <galens at seitzassoc.com> wrote:
>
> Due to the requirements of some design tools I need to run, I now have
> an Athlon 64 box sitting here.  I plan to install Centos on it.  Are
> there any reasons not to install the x86_64 version?

Most of the x86_64 problems that I know of are either plugin problems
for the 64-bit Firefox (such as Flash, which you might find you don't
miss after all) or related to greyhat multimedia apps (such as the
w32codecs for mplayer/xine/etc).  As long as any apps you need to run
are either pure 32-bit or pure 64-bit I think you won't really notice
the difference from a user perspective.  You can work around the above
problems by installing the 32-bit versions of
Firefox/mplayer/xine/etc, but things like automagic updates (yum) will
get hairy.

Also, hacks like ndiswrapper can be a problem if there's no 64-bit
Windows driver for your wireless.  The only one I know of that works
is the Broadcom driver (what I have).

Just for balance-sake, a good question to ask yourself is if there's
any reason why you *should* install x86_64, such as >4GB memory or
apps that will take (noticable) advantage of the extra general purpose
registers and enhanced instruction set.

Jason "x86_64 FC4" Martin



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