Re: perspectives on 32 bit vs 64 bit
On Thu, Oct 06, 2005 at 06:37:26PM +0200, Emmanuel Charpentier wrote:
> No choice nowadays when you buy a laptop. At least, this one can be used
> with free drivers (fbdev, ati, radeon ...), which is more than one can
> say of most laptop video hardware. And yes, I checked that point before
> buying.
>
> And no, I do *not* deserve that : this is what I call "Holier than
> Stallman" attitude. It reeks of self-righteousness.
>
> Ooops : there was a smiley at the end...
Do you want a laptop that uses only free open source drivers? Buy a
centrino based system. intel does seem to actually support open source.
Do not buy ATI, they haven't really offered anything for open source for
probably 3 or 4 years now (at least it seems to take that long before
any of their cards work with open source drivers). At least nvidia
offers closed source drivers for _all_ their chips as soon as they offer
windows support for them, including mobile chips. And it seems open
source 2d support happens very quickly too for nvidia.
So yes I am quite sure ati chips are your worst choice for open source
drivers. Many laptops have intel or nvidia chips in them and are much
easier to get to work.
> As a developper, I could agree. As an user, I couldn't care less. What I
> see is one pure-amd-64, which might be a 32-bits-library virgin ("holier
> than thou" attitude, again...) but is unable to use a very useful tool
> (many people have to cope with M$-formatted documents for now : not
> every institution is (yet) as wies as the Massachussets (sp ?) state...)
> without requiring work largely exceeeding the average end-user knowledge
> ; the other made practical compromises : it cannot boast 32-bits purity,
> but is usable by the average John Doe (which I tend to be, as far as
> systems go ...).
If you have a 2 or 3 year old system, installing debian is usually quite
simple, if you pick one of the completely supported architectures.
amd64 isn't even officially a debian architecture yet, partially because
it isn't fully supporting everything yet, and it is so new.
> Is the goal of Debian to be a hackers-only distribution ? That's not my
> reading of the Social Contract...
Well the goal of amd64 was to make a 64bit pure debian for x86_64
systems. They did that. Some programs may not compile for 64bit
systems yet, but that still doesn't mean the goal is failing. It just
takes time.
ubuntu's goal for amd64 was a complete working system with everything,
including both 64bit programs for most things, and 32bit program
support. Redhat did the same thing with their (somewhat hackish) biarch
support.
> (Semi-) correct (most modern hardware seem to be useable with older
> Micro$oft crocks), but irrelevant.
I tried to install winxp on a new amd64 server I bought, just to see if
it could run on it, and eventually gave up due to the sata controller
needing a driver loaded and I didn't have a floppy drive in the system.
Debian installed without any problems using the kernels in sarge.
Does this mean windows xp is unusuable by your average user? It means
your average user can't install windows themselves (or any other os for
that matter). That is generally true, and I don't think installing and
configuring a system is supposed to be done by your average user. Of
microsoft can't do it with their resources how could anyone else? :)
> 2.6.12...
Excactly. 2.6.12 actually has some support for ati chipsets, which
earlier kernels didn't.
> Hah ! I tried that. and bit my fingers up to the elbows...
Well there have been many 'broken' days lately. Oh well.
> My point, again ... It seems to be a Debian problem (see below).
Any distribution with 2.6.8 kernel would have the same problem on your
laptop. That does not make it a debian problem, it makes it a problem
of trying to use software on unsupported hardware (unsupported by that
particular software version).
> While I agree that kernel-package is a great tool, my feeble attempts at
> module-assistant failed miserably : at least in unstable,
> module-assistant complains about kernel-tree not being this or that in
> terms so obscure that it seemed simpler to configure and compile a new
> kernel.
Hmm, I always found it rather easy to use (especially using debian
provided kernels).
m-a -t prepare
m-a -t a-i nvidia ipw2200 etc
> I have mixed views on this (documentation license) : I think tat neither
> DFDGuidelines nor GPL doc license answer essential requirements, but I
> am not sure that those "essential documenrs" are mutually compatible...
> Therefore, I'll refrain taking sides until I understand better the
> issues at hand.
Sensible position to have I think so far. I don't fully understand what
the issue with the documentation license is myself.
> Agreed for stable. But that's also a problem with testing and unstable.
> Cuirrent testing and unstable disks are unusable : this can be forgiven
> for unstable, less so with testing ...
Well the debian installer is being improved with some major changes
right now, which take time to work out, and since the installer does
have interdependancies with what is in the rest of the archive, it means
that you would have to either stop moving new things into testing to
make sure the current working installer stays working, or you allow
testing to not have an installer for a while, while you develop the next
installer version.
You are allowed to isntall stable and upgrade to testing after all, so
it isn't as if there is no way to get testing onto a system. You could
even do that on an older system supported by sarge, and then upgrade and
finally move the drive to the system you wanted to work on.
It would be great if all the improvements could be done without ever
breaking the installer builds, but that just doesn't seem to be
realistic.
> That might be the point of updates. Woody had such updates, and they
> could have been more frequent.
Updates include security fixes and major bug fixes only. No new
functionality, no new versions of anything, which means no new kernel
and hence no new support for new hardware. Woody supported the excact
same hardware the day sarge was released as it did the day woody itself
was released.
> Ubuntu seems to have *one* goal lacking in Debian (while present in the
> Social Contract) : useability by end-users.
Depends on your needs I guess. I find debian very useful for everything
I have wanted to do with it. I guess ubuntu also finds debian useful as
a source of the majority of their system, so that they just have to
focus on cleaning up the user experience. It sounds like they do that
very well.
> Which was my point : the current state of Debian amd-64 for your average
> Joe is much more an insult than posting an Ubuntu question in the
> debian-amd64 list (and the overtones of *that* answer reeked of
> self-righteousness...). You can't point you garden-variety user to
> Debian amd-64 today and expect him|her to be satisfied with the result.
Maybe when debian actually has an official amd64 port will things be
better. Right now it doesn't.
> Bo not misread me : I didn't switch to Ubuntu for my desktop machine,
> and Debian is still my reference. But I had to tell, without being
> insulting to anybody, that it has its weak points.
I certainly didn't consider mentioning or recomending ubuntu insulting.
I just don't recomend it myself. I like debian and prefer to stick with
it until I find something better (so far not looking to happen anytime
soon).
Len Sorensen
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