Re: Re: perspectives on 32 bit vs 64 bit
On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 10:17:14AM +0200, Emmanuel Charpentier wrote:
> Hamish Moffat wrote :
> >> And you might want to give Ubuntu a try. The amd64 version is quite
> > How nice of you to say so on the debian-amd64 list! More like how
> > insulting...
>
> I am not a total newbie in using Linux or Debian (I must still have e
> set of floppies bearing ham, in the same box where lies my treasured
> two-floppies linux 0.12 lies...). Nonwhistanding this experience, I have
> to tell that, when I made a very serious effort to install debian-amd64
> on a new shiny laptop, I had the hardest time Debian gave me since the
[...]
> So, while Debian remains my tool of choice, its current amd64
> incarnation *CANNOT* be given to Linux newbies. Ubuntu almost can.
Emmanuel, I understand that you had problems installing on your laptop.
However I don't think you can conclude that all users will have trouble
with debian-amd64 because it wouldn't install on your laptop.
I don't think lack of DMA on the disk was the end of the world either,
at install time.
I have an nForce3-based Athlon64 desktop system and the installation was
perfect. I suspect my scenario is far more common than yours.
> Then, and only then, I hade a useable system ... with no openoffice. I
> had to install a chroot and grab a $#-+load of ia32 packages to do that.
Yes. This will be addressed in Debian in the future, through one of (or
probably both) amd64 packages for Oo.org, and/or multi-arch.
> In contrast, putting an Ubuntu (amd64 5.10 preview) CD in the drive and
> installing took me one hour (two to get some fine-tuning working)... The
Right. So its kernel supported your hardware better. I expect there are
cases where the opposite is true.
> So the point made by T. Steffens seems quite valid to me. I tend to
> think that, if something is "insulting", it is the currend usability of
> Debian-AMD64 on modern hardware by newbies/end-users/non-hackers...
I think your sample size of 1 is unhelpful. There are plenty of other
successful users of Debian-AMD64.
Your rant about DDs is misplaced. There are plenty of people who do care
about getting the stock kernel as useful as possible. They're doing a
great job; pretty soon I'll have no systems at all running custom
kernels.
My real point was though that your Ubuntu advocacy is misplaced.
I don't care if you use Ubuntu, but this is a Debian list.
Hamish
--
Hamish Moffatt VK3SB <hamish@debian.org> <hamish@cloud.net.au>
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