Re: Adding amd64 port for debian-edu?

[Daniel Hess <daniel@rio-grande.ping.de>]

On Tue, Nov 14, 2006 at 09:30:24PM +0100, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> [Holger Levsen]
> > I've added a new topic for next monday: the amd64 port. I got a
> > reply on my blogpost about it, and someone is interested in helping
> > us in testing it.

Which was me.

> > Or can we just decide on the list, that we can and
> > want to build amd64 packages and CDs?
> 
> I'm reluctantly positive to making amd64 images.  On the plus side:
> 
>  - Those wanting 64bit linux get a native image.
> 
>  - Get an architeture with support for a larger address space

- Supports more memory without using the expensive highmem stuff.

  This could be useful, if you want to have Server for X11-Terminals,
  or a multihead system.


- Modern Pentium or AMD-Processors support amd64, which gets executed
  faster, because of using the larger registers and the other new stuff.

  I think it is important, because once schools have systems with an
  amd64 capable CPU they will stay with it for some years (at least in
  Germany schools tend to stay with old stuff almost until it could no
  longer be repaired or it is not able to run modern applications). So
  why not to get everything out of the systems they provide?
  
> On the negative side
> 
>  - Yet another architecture to support.

Which is supported by Debian anyway, so only the stuff special to
Skolelinux needs special support.

>  - Increases the storage requirements as we need to archive binary CDs
>    and possibly DVDs for another architecture.
> 
>  - Increases load on build server.
> 
>  - Will it be hard to provide java packages for it?  What about
>    macromedia flash?

Sun has a amd64 version of the jdk and jre and the free ones do work
too.

There is no flash support for amd64 by macromedia/adobe. But gnash looks
very promising.

Maybe amd64 now just looks like an extra bunch of work, but maybe early
supports pays out once the CPUs with amd64 support are no longer top of
the art and schools relay needs the extra power of amd64 code. It's much
easier to tell schools to upgrade to an new version, than to tell them
that they need to reinstall.

With LTSP support in place amd64 could also be an interesting
architecture for terminal-servers. With some kind of 20 stations
accessing the server you need some ram, which is better supported by
amd64 than by i386 which needs highmem support.

Greetings

Daniel