Should I use Arch64?

jlimon · 2009-05-23 19:16:16

eldragon wrote:

karol wrote:
besides the ram limit, is there another reason for running arch64?
The 64-bit "resolution" is good for math.
so the answer is no

Pretty much. I got my Core 2 Duo Wolfdale based computer in the mail yesterday and prompty installed 32bit Arch and a PAE enabled kernel for the full 4gb of RAM.

I've yet to find a real reason to switch to 64bit.. I doubt I will in this life of this computer.

ruscook · 2009-05-23 21:33:16

I have a 2GB AMD dual core (about 2yrs old now), and a single core laptop with 1GB. I find on both machines the multitasking is "smoother" in 64bit. Yes more RAM gets chewed up, but the machine feels more responsive, runaway processes don't seem as often or to have the same impact etc... I've only been a 64bit convert for about 2 months.

Would I go back to 32bit? Not at the moment everything I need "works" including the wine32bit binaries. The devs have done a great job packaging 64 bit programs.

Just my 2c worth,
Russ

schuay · 2009-05-23 21:59:55

ruscook wrote:

Would I go back to 32bit? Not at the moment everything I need "works" including the wine32bit binaries. The devs have done a great job packaging 64 bit programs.

Same here. Running 64bt arch (only 2 gigs RAM) with a 32bit chroot. On a new install I'd probably go with a multilib environment, having a whole chroot for skype and wine seems a bit overkill to me

iBertus · 2009-05-23 22:46:27

There is no good reason to not use 64-bit these days. Well, the only reason that I can think of is lack of support for one mission critical piece of software (of which I cannot think of any) or maybe hardware troubles and again I've not heard of any for this either. I now run Arch64 full-time on all of my machines and haven't had a single problem in ages. Flash, java (even plugin), embeded media in firefox, DVD playback, compiz w/ nvidia drivers all work nearly flawlessly now.

I use my machines for a combination of GIS/programming work and the usual personal stuff (photography, music, games) and it out does show better performance than 32-bit for the media and computationally intensive applications.

fukawi2 · 2009-05-24 05:09:29

jlimon wrote:

Pretty much. I got my Core 2 Duo Wolfdale based computer in the mail yesterday and prompty installed 32bit Arch and a PAE enabled kernel for the full 4gb of RAM.
I've yet to find a real reason to switch to 64bit.. I doubt I will in this life of this computer.

It's like installing a 1.4 litre 4-cylinder engine in a Ferrari IMHO.

ruscook · 2009-05-24 07:38:30

schuay wrote:

ruscook wrote:
Would I go back to 32bit? Not at the moment everything I need "works" including the wine32bit binaries. The devs have done a great job packaging 64 bit programs.
Same here. Running 64bt arch (only 2 gigs RAM) with a 32bit chroot. On a new install I'd probably go with a multilib environment, having a whole chroot for skype and wine seems a bit overkill to me

Schuay I didn't even install a chroot... I just use bin32wine (or whatever it's called) and it installs it's own 32bit dependencies.

Russ

sand_man · 2009-05-24 10:01:01

You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a 32bit and 64bit install anymore.
Get with the times and just upgrade!

mrunion · 2009-05-24 14:23:02

I use 64-bit here because when using Blender 3D to do "hair" particles, sometimes millions are needed. a 32-bit OS sometimes don't have enough "integers" to let me enumerate all the particles I need.

Honestly, I have one machine with 32-bit, one with 64-bit and I can't tell the difference. I have some 32-bit libs on the 64-bit machine for the few things I use that need them.

jlimon · 2009-05-25 21:23:25

sand_man wrote:

You wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a 32bit and 64bit install anymore.
Get with the times and just upgrade!

As many people have said, there's really no difference between using the two - and you can use all your ram with PAE and not have to deal with *any* gotchas.

I can understand some people may NEED 64bit, but for a lot of people it won't be worth the hassle for a while.

Right now it's more about hardware transitions than software, but 32bit support will have to be around for a VERY long time so I'm not really all that concerned about using a 64bit OS.

fukawi2 · 2009-05-25 22:47:01

jlimon wrote:

I can understand some people may NEED 64bit, but for a lot of people it won't be worth the hassle for a while.

I haven't experienced any hassle other than accidentally using 32-bit mirrors instead of 64-bit when copy-and-pasting custom repos into pacman.conf

DevoidOfWindows · 2009-05-26 02:13:00

Only thing that sucks about the sixty-four-bit version (of any Linux, really) for me so far is that I'm forced to use redraw mode in the framebuffer (ywrap isn't supported on sixty-four-bits). And it is really, really, really, really sloooooow.

Last edited by DevoidOfWindows (2009-05-26 02:14:47)

sand_man · 2009-05-26 02:53:37

jlimon wrote:

I can understand some people may NEED 64bit, but for a lot of people it won't be worth the hassle for a while.

What hassle?

jlimon · 2009-05-26 04:25:45

sand_man wrote:

jlimon wrote:
I can understand some people may NEED 64bit, but for a lot of people it won't be worth the hassle for a while.
What hassle?

atm there's a lot of little gotchas with 32bit compatibility with wine, win32codecs, some binary blobs, flash, etc.

No real reason for me use it.

jowilkin · 2009-05-26 04:39:39

The media center app XBMC and its derivatives are terrible on 64-bit right now. I understand that they've made some progress in the latest SVN builds, but you still really want to run the 32-bit version.

There are many fewer problems with 64-bit recently (for instance at least we have flash), but there are still some gotchas and little noticable benefit in most apps.

I run 32 bit arch on my laptop which has 2 gigs of ram and is a general purpose machine and 64 bit arch on my desktop at work that has 4 gigs of ram.

Last edited by jowilkin (2009-05-26 04:41:53)

Statix · 2009-05-26 05:15:00

Yup, we have 64 bit flash now and it runs fine for me. I haven't come across any problems in my latest 64 bit install. The only thing that I've found is that the acroread plugin won't work for firefox (as it is 32 bit binary.) But of course there are alternatives, see: mozplugger and epdfview.

Wine runs great for me using bin32-wine-suse and the lib32 libraries. Sure, having lib32 libraries takes up a little more space, but if you have a system that supports 64 bit I'm sure that a few mb won't be a problem.

64 bit is where we're headed anyway. You 32 bit people are just living in the past. If we all move to 64 bit then the problems with application compatiblity will ultimately be solved, as proprietary people will release 64 apps.

mahan_h · 2009-05-26 05:30:01

Intel core2 Quad 2500,

The main question is that does this CPU support 64-bit processing? or should I use arch64 only because of my 8GB RAM?
if only RAM is the reason for switching the OS, I will rather reduce RAM size, untill my CPU supports such processing.

well, ofcourse, another reason for this switching would be if arch64 is really and considerably faster than arch32.

Last edited by mahan_h (2009-05-26 05:33:24)

jowilkin · 2009-05-26 05:45:44

Yes your CPU supports 64-bit. Arch64 will not be considerably faster, but you will gain some benefit in some apps. There are very few apps that have issues on 64-bit these days, so unless you know there is one that you specifically need that has problems on 64 bit, you should probably just go with 64 bit.

You are computer savvy enough to be using Arch, so you should have no problem working around any issues that might (but probably won't) crop up.

jlimon · 2009-05-26 06:34:10

Statix wrote:

Yup, we have 64 bit flash now and it runs fine for me. I haven't come across any problems in my latest 64 bit install. The only thing that I've found is that the acroread plugin won't work for firefox (as it is 32 bit binary.) But of course there are alternatives, see: mozplugger and epdfview.
Wine runs great for me using bin32-wine-suse and the lib32 libraries. Sure, having lib32 libraries takes up a little more space, but if you have a system that supports 64 bit I'm sure that a few mb won't be a problem.
64 bit is where we're headed anyway. You 32 bit people are just living in the past. If we all move to 64 bit then the problems with application compatiblity will ultimately be solved, as proprietary people will release 64 apps.

If that's where we're headed, I'll meet you guys when it gets there.

I'm glad my CPU has 64bit features but if I'm able to run a 32bit kernel with full RAM support up to 64GB with no loss in speed and not have to deal with those little gotchas and such, I'm fine.

I see no disadvantages to running a 32bit OS and some disadvantages to moving to 64bit. It's not a race, or worse a pissing contest.

Last edited by jlimon (2009-05-26 06:34:40)

ngoonee · 2009-05-26 07:42:00

Well, if the gotchas are relatively minor, why not help out?

Open source relies on the community making contributions, after all. Similarly to separating your recycling. Its a bit of a hassle, and doesn't benefit you directly, but there IS a communal benefit.

Exopaladin · 2009-05-26 16:23:32

Main gotcha for me with x86_64 is the fact that 64bit flash still blows (HD videos + fullscreening videos in general on a large monitor). Plus the fact that with Arch you need to maintain a 32bit chroot if you want to be able to compile your own versions of wine/any other 32bit stuff due to the anti-multilib attitude. Although these issues don't bother me on distros where I can easily mix package architectures and that actually ship multilib built GCC/glibc.

DevoidOfWindows · 2009-06-04 03:30:19

Hmm, maybe sixty-four-bit was not as great (for me) after all. My sixty-four-bit experience:

- Flash performance is horrible.
- AMD/ATI driver does not perform will with compositing enabled.
- Large amounts of I/O (copying files, etc.) makes the machine hard to use [slow, unresponsive] while the operations are going.

I switched back to thirty-two bit:

- Flash is excellent.
- I can have compositing with lots of nice and aesthetically-pleasing special effects, and it does not slow anything down noticeably. HD videos/Flash will still play smoothly.
- Machine is actually responsive enough to be useful when there is high I/O.
- I have more memory to use for something like VirtualBox (and I have four gigs).

Last edited by DevoidOfWindows (2009-06-04 03:31:12)

Arch Linux

#26 2009-05-23 19:16:16

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#27 2009-05-23 21:33:16

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#28 2009-05-23 21:59:55

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#29 2009-05-23 22:46:27

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#30 2009-05-24 05:09:29

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#31 2009-05-24 07:38:30

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#32 2009-05-24 10:01:01

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#33 2009-05-24 14:23:02

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#34 2009-05-25 21:23:25

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#35 2009-05-25 22:47:01

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#36 2009-05-26 02:13:00

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#37 2009-05-26 02:53:37

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#38 2009-05-26 04:25:45

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#39 2009-05-26 04:39:39

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#40 2009-05-26 05:15:00

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#41 2009-05-26 05:30:01

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#42 2009-05-26 05:45:44

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#43 2009-05-26 06:34:10

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#44 2009-05-26 07:42:00

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#45 2009-05-26 16:23:32

Re: Should I use Arch64?

#46 2009-06-04 03:30:19

Re: Should I use Arch64?

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