Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 02:07:11 +0100
From: Steve Dobson <steve.dobson@syscall.org.uk>
To: debian-amd64@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: request for advice on upgrading
Resent-Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 01:08:26 +0000 (UTC)
Resent-From: debian-amd64@lists.debian.org
Hi Reid
On Sun, 2008-05-11 at 16:31 -0500, Reid Priedhorsky wrote:
Bottom line: I would like to upgrade with as little pain as possible. I
installed a SATA software RAID not too long ago, and the only components
that need replacement are motherboard, RAM, and CPU. I have been googling
but haven't yet been able to form a coherent strategy.
That's what I did. My AMD64 system must be almost two years old now.
Can I buy 64-bit (amd64) stuff and just do what I have been doing, i.e.,
drop it in and reboot, keeping my i386 install? If so: What are the
drawbacks? (E.g., performance hit, memory limitations.) Can I eventually
upgrade to an amd64 installation in-place later?
I bought a Asus A8V AMD64 motherboard, memory & AMD Athlon 3500 CPU at a
local computer fair. I was there with my local LUG prompting Linux. I
took an old system which included DVD writer, Graphics card, hard disks,
etc and just swapped in the new hardware. Apart from a new PSU that was
all I bought, everything else was re-cycled from hardware I already had.
I can remember running KNOPPIX and it was fast. We were selling KNOPPIX
disk to cover the cost of stall so that's why it KNOPPIX, to demo it to
the punters. It ran just fine, everything worked that we tried and
much, much quicker. So if you want to just upgrade the AMD64 stuff and
leave the rest alone you can.
I would install a 486 kernel image before you change any hardware. That
way you will have something that works for all CPU types. I have a
tendency to do this anyway on my 32-bit systems so that if the
motherboard dies (as it did once for my LAN server) I can just move the
hardware to a spare system quickly. This will not work if you install a
64-bit OS as the kernel has to be 64-bit to support it.
You can keep the 32-bit kernel if you want, but why? There are AMD64
bit kernels in the i386 archive so you can run a 32-bit OS with a 64bit
kernel. I've not done this myself, so I can't advices you of any
issues.
Personal I bought a 64-bit system because I wanted to go pure 64. I
don't even bother with a 32-bit chroot environment, I'm happy with the
system as is. Somethings don't work well - flash for example, although
there are workarounds. Personally I like my workstation browser not
getting those flash ads, and if I want to watch something from YouTube
then I just hope on to my laptop and view it there.
Hope this helps
Steve