[Cialug] 64 bit difficulties?

Fri Jul 27 11:59:13 CDT 2007

I'm running RHEL 5 on Amd x2 cpu's and other single core Amd 64's.   I
haven't had any kernel issues.  The 64 bit problems that I've had were
all firefox 64 and firefox plugin related.

Running the 64 bit version and downloading and installing 32 bit plugins
doesn't work. To make it work, you'll need to  change the  firefox
configuration file so that it runs in 32 bit mode in order to get stuff
like mplayer and flash to work.  After discovering this, I installed the
32 bit version and everything just works. So, while you can make the 64
bit version work, its much easier to just install the 32 bit version.

I couldn't tell any differance in performance between the 32 and 64 bit
versions of firefox, so I'm guessing the argument is probably really an
academic one. 

One thing that got me was that when I finally got everything working,  I
did an update and yum installed the 64 bit version of firefox. This
broke everything. It was also difficult to determine what happened,
since when I queried the rpm database, it listed  firefox and firefox_64
as just  "firefox". So I didn't notice right away that both version's
were installed.   I uninstalled the 64 bit version and *presto* I was
back up and running.

Sometimes all the BS with RHEL and  firefox plugins like mplayer etc,
makes me think about Ubuntu...  Someday  redhat will figure out a way to
make all the licensing stuff work...

:) Dave

On Fri, 2007-07-27 at 11:25 -0500, Daniel A. Ramaley wrote:
> I posted over a year ago[1] a question about graphics accelerators 
> because i was contemplating building a new machine. Well, my main 
> machine is 9 years old this month and i finally decided it was time to 
> build a new one; the parts should arrive next week. It will have an AMD 
> Athlon 64 X2 CPU. My question is, what difficulties should i 
> realistically expect to encounter if i install a 64-bit distribution? I 
> will most likely put Debian on the machine, though i'm still debating 
> between stable and testing (just upgraded my old machine last night to 
> testing so i can play with it for a few days first).
> 
> As for the graphics card i asked about earlier, i did go with nVidia. 
> I'd really prefer open source drivers; i've enjoyed Linux' usual 
> stability on my MacBook which has Intel graphics. But the consensus 
> seemed to be that though nVidia is closed, at least they keep the 
> drivers updated. So i found one fairly new but slow enough to not need 
> a fan that is listed as Linux compatible and ordered it. I am a bit 
> concerned that i'll have to replace it at some point though; i hope 
> this machine to last as long as my last one did and even if nVidia does 
> a good job of maintaining their drivers, i would be rather surprised if 
> they continued to maintain support for 8 or 9 years. Hopefully by then 
> either ATI and/or nVidia will have come to their senses with regards to 
> open source, Intel will have released standalone graphics cards, or the 
> Open Graphics Project[2] will have something on the market.
> 
> [1] http://www.cialug.org/pipermail/cialug/2006-May/005666.html
> [2] http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118, Drake University
> Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
> +1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311 USA
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