[PLUG] 32-bit vs. 64-bit: Decision Criteria

[Dale Snell]

On Thu, 3 Mar 2011 14:59:47 -0800 (PST)
Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

> On Thu, 3 Mar 2011, Russell Senior wrote:
> 
> > My advice is, go 64-bit when you can.
> 
> Russell,
> 
>    I certainly respect your opinions, so I will take your
> advice when Pat releases the next Slackware. I'm sure there
> will be some compatibility issues with firefox, flash-player
> (gag!), and such, but those will probably be worked out.
> 
>    Most of my work with R is spatial statistics (although I
> recently ran the Mann-Whitney U-test (a.k.a. Wilcoxon test) on
> a small data set. Perhaps I'll need to double the RAM in the
> laptop.
> 
> Many thanks,
> 
> Rich
> 

Rich,

For what it's worth, I've been running 64-bit Firefox _and_ 64-bit
flash-player for some months now, and it seems to work fine.
(Well, as fine as flash-player ever works, regardless of bittage.
*Phthbthbthbthbt!*)  Before I got a 64-bit version of flash that
worked, I had to load a number of 32-bit libraries so that the
32-bit version would work.  This was on a 64-bit version of Fedora
with 64-bit Firefox.

I have an Athlon dual-core system, with 2 Gig of RAM.  The system
_really_ needs another gig or two, as I wind up chewing up swap
space after a while.  Firefox is rather a memory hog.  Of course,
it doesn't help that I usually have two or three windows open
simultaneously, with six or eight tabs each. :-)  When yum does
an update, it wants a lot of memory, too.

--Dale

--
Lothar:  Runs pretty fast for a nerdy dude.
Eastwood:  I'm gonna say that when the interdimensional quantum
physicist bolts for the exit, we should probably follow his lead.