64 bit Linux. Is it worth it?

[Alistair Campbell]

I have a disk full of apps in tar.gz format I wish to install on my Suse10.2 (64-bit version). Right with the very first one (a Gens emulator) I ran into a major problem. At the ./config stage I was informed that linux64 was not recognised. Is this a common problem with packages and would I be well advised to go back to the 32 -bit version before I try to install any more?

[techieMoe]

What apps are we talking about here? There may already be a 64-bit version available in RPM for SuSE. In general I've had no issues using 64-bit Linux in the last 6 months to a year. In the past there was a noticeable difference in quality assurance between 32-bit apps and their 64-bit counterparts, but for the most part that's been addressed in the major distros.

Now, you won't likely notice any performance increase from your applications using 64-bit, so if it's just simpler for you (and you don't need the ability to use more than 4GB of RAM) then 32-bit is still a viable option.

[oz]

64 bit Linux. Is it worth it?

I've been using 64-bit for the last 4 months and have had no package issues at all, so have never looked back. I don't run Flash, so I've not missed anything there, but of course it too can be run with some additional effort.

So for me, yes it has been worth it.

[Alistair Campbell]

Thanks for the helpful comment. The apps in question are games for the most part as I am trying to make up a Linux games machine for my grandchildren. I have collected numerous packages of varying vintage and formats (mainly from SourceForge) , so I would probably be advised to go back to 32-bit rather than spend the rest of my retirement battling with compiling failures. I suppose I had naively assumed that the 64-bit version would be more or less backwards comaptible.
I take it I will not be able to load the 32-bit version over my current 64-bit version, and that I will have to start again for scratch.

[techieMoe]

Thanks for the helpful comment. The apps in question are games for the most part as I am trying to make up a Linux games machine for my grandchildren. I have collected numerous packages of varying vintage and formats (mainly from SourceForge) , so I would probably be advised to go back to 32-bit rather than spend the rest of my retirement battling with compiling failures. I suppose I had naively assumed that the 64-bit version would be more or less backwards comaptible.

That depends entirely on your specific system. Some distributions install the 32-bit libraries as well as 64-bit ones for backwards compatibility purposes, and some do not. However in your case it may just be a simpler option to install a 32-bit distribution.

I take it I will not be able to load the 32-bit version over my current 64-bit version, and that I will have to start again for scratch.

Correct.

[bigtomrodney]

Have you tried looking through the online repositories for SUSE? When I used SUSE I always added the Packman repositories which gave me access to a lot of applications. In fact you mentioned gens, the Genesis/Megadrive emulator - I installed that very package along with Zsnes from that same repository.
Package managers really are great once you get your head around the concept. Also the overhead in bandwidth isn't that big for packages I find.

[Alistair Campbell]

Thanks for the useful tip. I loaded the Packman repositories and was delighted to be able to download a large number of games, which I was able to get YAST to install for me. However I was disappointed again to discover so far that many of the games run sluggishly or hang the PC completely (this on a Sempron 2800 with 1GB RAM and a GeForce 6200 Turbo display card). I hope this a 64-bit incompatibility problem and not a general Linux problem, though these programs came from a Suse package list. My dream of a Linux games PC is beginning to fade!

[techieMoe]

Thanks for the useful tip. I loaded the Packman repositories and was delighted to be able to download a large number of games, which I was able to get YAST to install for me. However I was disappointed again to discover so far that many of the games run sluggishly or hang the PC completely (this on a Sempron 2800 with 1GB RAM and a GeForce 6200 Turbo display card). I hope this a 64-bit incompatibility problem and not a general Linux problem, though these programs came from a Suse package list. My dream of a Linux games PC is beginning to fade!

Are the games that run sluggishly 3D games? If so, you might see if the proper Nvidia driver is installed on your system. If not, there must be something else at play here. If the games you're playing have newer versions available in the repositories, I'd recommend trying them out over your TAR.GZ versions.

[Cool01]

I have been meaning to post a reply for this question for some time now and every time I think about it, I come to the conclusion that I need more time to think about it.

I ran 64-bit 10.2 for over a year and I was quite satisfied with it. There were a few early bugs, but nothing significant. Likewise, early deficiencies were handled fairly well over time. Regarding Flash, the original distribution actually used 32-bit Firefox and also 32-bit Flash, which worked. Then they upgraded to 64-bit Firefox and Flash stopped working. Then later, the guys pointed me to the "wrapper" program to run the 32-bit version in the 64-bit version of Firefox, so I had Flash working without significant problems for the rest of my usage of 10.2.

The biggest problem I ran into, and kept running into was ATi Radeon drivers. Most of the time I had the driver(s) working with 3D acceleration, but sometimes I ended up with no 3D acceleration and sometimes I was only running the basic VESA driver. It was always a mess. From what I hear, so was nVidia. That pretty much leaves Intel drivers.

I tried a "big" jump to 11.0 almost as soon as 11.0 was available, and found it was a disaster. There were far too many bugs. So I fell back to 10.3, and then I found out that a lot of the bugs in 11.0 had actually been in in 10.3, and were still there. But I am still using 64-bit 10.3 in my main 64-bit box right now. I am still stuck on the VESA driver because I have not gotten around to downloading the libraries I need to compile and link the latest ATi drivers. In fact, I am not really enthusiastic about doing so.

Recently I have installed 32-bit 11.0 on a couple of computers, and, it is better than 64-bit was when I tried 64-bit, but looking at the Bugzilla reports, I have a feeling that 64-bit was never really much worse than 32-bit. The 32-bit version was pretty bad out-of-the-box too. So maybe, if I tried 64-bit 11.0 it would not be so bad right now.

I have recently been watching the Beta development of 11.1, and it looks like 11.1 will be quite a bit more stable than 11.0 or even 10.3. If you want that to be true, then I suggest that you download the 11.1 version coming out this weekend (target date Nov. 27) and get involved with the reporting bugs in the Bugzilla system. It looks to me like they are concentrating their programmers on getting 11.1 out-the-door, and any bug you find will be corrected very quickly. In fact, you have a much better chance of getting a bug fixed in 11.1 right now than in 11.0 or 10.3. At least that is how it appears if you have been watching the situation.

For example, there is a bug in the "Online Update" system which requires you to kill the "PackageKitd" process in order to do updates sometimes. This has been a known bug since before 11.0 was released. It is marked "critical". It is still not fixed. Yet they are making a big effort to get other bugs less critical than this fixed in 11.1. I could go on about this. I cannot really criticize them for these decisions because they have a limited number of programmers and have to pick and chose what to get done at any given time. They are *all* bugs and somebody wants them fixed. But it shows that right now, the best bet is getting involved with the 11.1 cleanup than waiting for a specific bug in 10.3 or 11.0 to be fixed. I imagine that bugs in 10.2 (which is about to become unsupported) are being completely ignored by now.

So this really seems to be more important right now than the 32/64 issue. If you want to have a really good 64-bit OS, then download the 11.1 "whatever-it-will-be" (it might be Beta-6 or RC1 -- it depends) and see if you find anything wrong with it.

Is 64-bit worth it? Well, you are not going to get support for more than about 3.5 GB of RAM without it, so if that is important yes. Also, as time goes on, and 64-bit versions are better optimized, it will eventually surpass 32-bit in some fairly clear measurements like in graphics if GIMP is upgraded to support "RAW" formats and 48-bit and eventually 64-bit colour data. It should also be noticeably faster for some database work, and some math work, though not necessarily for 3D work (which uses a lot of special instructions and sometimes can even use the graphics chips).

Anyway, that is about all I can say without a few more days of trying to figure it all out. . . .

Did that help?

[waterhorse]

Before I install suse11.1 to my computer I have one question.

http://download.opensuse.org/reposit...openSUSE_11.1/

Index of /repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/Community/openSUSE_11.1_KDE4_Factory_Desktop

Index of /repositories/KDE:/KDE4:/Factory:/Extra-Apps/openSUSE_11.1

Index of /repositories/KDE:/Qt44/openSUSE_11.1


and do I need few more?