On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 09:38:19AM +0100, Srdjan Todorovic wrote:
Hi
2008/10/3 Mark Rogers mark@quarella.co.uk:
Chris G wrote:
On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 07:27:26AM +0100, mbm wrote:
Well, unless you intend installing a 64 bit distro, there's no point in worrying about a upgrade path from 4 Gig of RAM
I'm running a 64-bit Fedora at the moment, for Vmware/Virtualbox it makes sense. I have 6Gb of memory.
Assuming hardware supports it (most new hardware will, surely) is there any good reason *not* to install a 64-bit O/S now?
Depends if you really mean OS as in the kernel and not the userland applications too. I think I saw that Gentoo masks some things out (compiz?) on the amd64 architecture due to insuficient testing. Could just be an archaic Gentoo-ism. :)
I've been running 64-bit Ubuntu since 7.04 (maybe before that, I can't remember) and never had any significant problems. It's only where you need to use Windows code (eg ndiswrapper, flash*) that it tends to be problematic but there's workarounds for stuff like that. Generally, though, Linux has been 64-bit capable for so long that O/S problems have been ironed out long ago.
64bit kernel, 32bit userland? I heard this was possible but never tried it. Might try it on my laptop as part of a tripple boot.
It's what I do for the 'difficult' applications. I run 64-bit Fedora and most applications are 64-bit as well but I run a 32-bit Firefox so I don't get any issues with ndiswrapper, flash, etc. Yes, I know there are workarounds for 64-bit Firefox but it's just *easier* to run the 32-bit version and it's dead easy in a 64-bit installation.