Re: Any reason not to run amd64 these days?
On Sunday, February 02, 2014 01:58:54 PM Rick Macdonald wrote:
> I've been running 32bit Debian since release 0.93, before buzz was
> released. I've been through a few PCs over these 20 years, and now my
> latest one is dying on me (HP Dual core Pentium D, 4GB RAM).
>
Sorry to see your dual core is dying. I like running quad cores today, makes
compiling stuff from source speedier.
> I'd like to take a step up and get a machine with more memory (12 or
> 16GB). I've done some searching and it seems these days there are no
> limitations with having access to all Debian packages, especially if one
> uses the multi-arch feature.
>
Frankly there's still barely any justification to go above the 4 GiB limit. If
you want lots of memory I'd still suggest saviing money and bumping up to 8
GiB, but the reality is that even if you're gaming on Windows 4 GiB is still
plenty.
> Still, I'd like to ask on the list here. Are there any issues with
> switching to amd64? What about drivers?
>
No real major issues, no. I've never had problems with drivers (Even binary
blobs.) in 64-bit, and most Linux distributions have very good multilib
capability. Though personally I think Debian's multilib support is not as good
as Archlinux's (Arch simply provides a multilib repository, Debian does
something weird with forcing architectures in apt and dpkg. Frankly if you
have a 64-bit machine it's a waste of your machine's potential staying on a
32-bit operating system even with less than 4 GiB of RAM.
You will, especially on this mailing list, get a lot of people who act like
running 64-bit if you don't have more than 4 GiB of RAM is some sort of
apocalyptic disaster, but I've been running on sub-4 GiB 64-bit rigs with 64-
bit Linux since 2007 with absolutely zero issues. even when running 32-bit
software on 64-bit Linux.
> The new machine will likely be an off-the-shelf HP I7-4470 CPU machine
> with an NVIDIA GeForce card, somewhere between a GT635 and a GTX660.
>
If you're interested in mac performace (At a little higher cost.) I'd
definitely recommend a dedicated card and never use integrated graphics. Looks
like you have some in mind. I use a GT 640 in mine.
> What about running 32 bit windows and apps in wine or VMWare?
>
No issues I've ever seen running 32-bit stuff in WINE or VMs on a 64-bit
processor, again, because of multilib support, chances are when you install
WINE it'll be a 32-bit version. There are 64-bit versions of WINE but most
people use 32-bit because most Windows software is still 32-bit.
> Regards,
> Rick
Conrad
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