Re: ia64 and i386
Jeroen van Aart (jeroen@mompl.net on 2011-05-24 13:39 -0700):
> Mathieu Malaterre wrote:
> > amd64 is possible. Since from amd64 you can still run x86 code ...
> > but not the other way around. Is there a drawback when installing
> > an amd64 kernel ?
>
> 32 bits is likely to play more video codecs than 64 bits, by virtue
> of the w64codecs package lacking a bit. And to the best of my
> knowledge just because you can run 32 bits binaries on a 64 bits
> kernel doesn't mean w32codecs will actually work. I keep an older 32
> bits system around just because of that.
To add to this, Windows games (and thus most Wine users) need the 32-bit
OpenGL libraries to get 3D acceleration, and they are not available as
a package for amd64 (yet). So yes, there are valid reasons to run
32-bit Linux even on 64-bit systems.
For myself, I run i386 on my Pentium D because 64-bit support on the
earlier Intel models was actually slower than 32-bit -- but with the
amd64 kernel. This works fine except it used to break dkms (it tried to
compile 32-bit modules, which the 64-bit kernel won't load).
Regards,
Arno
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