Re: Broken applications: Could we be honest?
Thanks for the response.
On Sat, Jul 08, 2006 at 07:23:54PM +0300, Török Edvin wrote:
> On 7/8/06, Art Edwards <edwardsa@afrl.kirtland.af.mil> wrote:
> >I have been writing to the list about two applications that
> >are so broken on the AMD64 distribution that they render the
> >box pretty useless.
> Did you send bugreports for those programs?
It turns out that the bugs are present in FC 5 as well.
> Btw, what is the appropriate severity level for a package that doesn't
> work on a certain architecture at all? Is it release critical?
I don't know
> >I'm sure one could say that two measly
> >applications are no big deal. However, if you do scientific computation
> >for a living, and two of the primary tools are broken, you now have
> >a rather clumsy paperweight where a computer should be.
> You have the option of running 32-bit debian on the box.
Because I had so many problems, including some with gnome, I
installed FC 5. However, prior to making that change, I had installed the chroot.
I have to say that
I found this to be an unsatisfying solution. Part of the reason I moved to
FC for the time being is that they haven't used the chroot, so that it is
possible, for instance, to run a 32-bit firefox that can see the entire
file system. This is useful for looking at the html documentation. Now, I could
install a complete second version, but this seems a bit perverse. I'm sure this will
fall on deaf ears, but I don't think that the pure-64 choice made by debian was appropriate
at this time. The virtue of AMD64 is that it CAN execute the 32-bit executables transparently,
implying that there shouldn't be a sequestering of these executables and their associated libraries,
except, perhaps, in their own directories.
I haven't yet tried installing 32-bit grace under FC5. At this point, I'm doing most of my code
development, and all of my 2d graphics (xmgrace) on my 32-bit laptop (Debian stable).
>
> You have the possibility to run a pure64 debian, _and_ create a 32-bit
> chroot for applications
> that don't yet work on 64bit. It is explained in the debian amd64 howto.
> Using this approach you get the advantages of 64bit for applications
> that "support" it (i.e. they work on it), and you can use the 32bit
> chroot for the rest, there should be no slowdown,
> amd64 can run 32bit instruction natively.
>
> >Unless such core pieces as the debugging tool (ddd) and the data display
> >tool
> >(xmgrace) are working,
> I am not trying to tell you to use other tools, but here it is what I
> use for debugging, and
> it works on amd64:
> I am using clewn [http://clewn.sourceforge.net/], and I am very happy with
> it.
> It display the source code in gvim, and allows you to issue gdb
> commands, either from vim, or from the gdb "console". It has support
> for watches, etc. IMHO it is worth checking out.
>
> >it is dishonest to pretend that the 64-bit version
> >is ready for testing.
> Did you mean "testing" as in "debian testing distro, aka etch"?
Yes.
>
> >It would be very nice if you, and other distro's, were
> >to put appropriate caveats on the websites, saying that 64-bit is really
> >not
> >ready for the prime-time desktop. That way, we could make better purchasing
> >decisions.
> You can still run those apps in 32-bit chroot, so you didn't spend
> your money in vain.
>
>
> Cheers,
> Edwin
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