Arch Linux

Joeman1

Member

Registered: 2006-07-03

Posts: 49

Question about 64 bit

I was thinking about reloading my Arch system and was thinking about 64 bit. Just wonder if its mature enough for me to use it on a day to day basis. Such as, full web access to software such as Flash 9, mplayer plugins for media, music plugins for Amarok, Cedega use and other games like Quake 2, 4, RTCW, Enemy Territory, and such.

Is it recommended, or should I stick with 32 bit for a time?

Thanks!!!

Joe

slackhack

Member

Registered: 2004-06-30

Posts: 738

Re: Question about 64 bit

i installed it yesterday and have only been using it since then, so take these comments with a grain of salt. but it does seem relatively mature, actually. flash 9 was easy to set up using the wiki, it took under 5 minutes. the only things i've noticed so far (only less than a day of use, remember) is that .mov content in mplayer is really slow and choppy for some reason. there have been a few minor non-issue things, but nothing worth mentioning. so far everything's working. no experience with the gaming stuff, though.

i would recommend doing what i did and installing it on a spare partition. that way you can check it out to see if it does what you need, and if anything's not working or missing, you can boot back into 32 until you get it sorted.

>> one other thing to mention is that unless i'm doing something wrong, java doesn't seem to work. i also haven't gotten my palm working yet, but that might just be a configuration thing, udev rules i have to copy over, etc.

Last edited by slackhack (2007-05-21 16:38:15)

dmartins

Member

Registered: 2006-09-23

Posts: 360

Re: Question about 64 bit

The only real issue I have come across is the lack of a Java browser plugin. There is a bug report here for it which indicates a 64 bit java plugin will be available in the 1.7 Java release. Note that is not specific to Arch or even Linux. 64 bit Windows users have been left out in the cold too!
The blackdown-jre package available in the AUR provides a Java plugin but I've found it crashes too often to be usable and it doesn't look like the project is getting much attention anymore. Or, if you are are KDE user, the Konqueror browser is supposed to have java built in which works well on 64-bit.

Also, some packages in the AUR need to be ported to Arch64 still. Often this is as easy as adding 'x86_64' to the arch variable in the PKGBUILD file. All in all the port is pretty close to complete and getting better every day.