To be or not to be 64 bit

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Originally Posted by Kano

Well the problem with Debian is, that even on Sid you would only use ffmpeg code from 20070307...

That can be a problem... I see your point.

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Originally Posted by cttw

What i would like if for users experienced with the 64 bit version to report on the stability and usability of workarounds needed to get functionality.

Generally speaking the stuff works well. More often than not, it's less of a problem with the workarounds than one would think. As it stands, I was one of the early adopters of 64-bit x86 mode as I was handed an engineering eval Solo 2 board in exchange for attempting to make 64-bit Linux games. It's still got a few "issues" for certain situations, but it should do very nicely for many things.

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Dealbreakers would be KDE

Not a problem. To the best of my knowledge it's been working rather nicely since the earliest days of x86-64.

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openvpn

I believe this works fine. At the time I was using my AMD64 laptop, I didn't need to do anything special, but I believe it works right.

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compiz-fusion

This depends on your GPU choice. NVidia should work stably in 64-bits as well as 32-bits. AMD's previous iteration of drivers had stabilized, but it's still less stable for 64-bit when compared to NVidia on things right at the moment.

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firefox plugins such as flash

Here's one of those edge cases. If you use the wrapper plugin that lets you run Flash 9 for 32 bits via proxy dispatch, it'll work, and largely well- but there are instances where I've seen it lock up Firefox on me, so your mileage may well vary there.

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mplayer,

It seems to work. I was using it at the beginning of this year on my AMD64 laptop...

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wine

It just rocks as does CrossOver. I used Wine to do my taxes this year under 64-bits. :D

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vmware.

I think it'll work as a 32-bit app just fine. I know VirtualBox works as a 32-bit app with some bludgeoning.

Most of the problems lie with things like laptops with Broadcom chips where you end up needing to use NDISwrapper and have to go scrounging for the 64-bit NDIS driver (can't use the 32-bit driver for this, it won't work right...).

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Any info on if quake wars will run on it?

It should. Quake4 and Doom3 ran on my AMD64 desktop just fine- you just need working drivers that will handle 32-bit compatibility mode applications and you're good to go.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kano

Well the problem with Debian is, that even on Sid you would only use ffmpeg code from 20070307...

Heh... I can see that being an issue, yes... :D