General 64 bit support?

[GreatBunzinni]

I've downloaded Dapper Flight 7 AMD64 and I'm thinking of installing the 64 bit release instead of the 32 bit one. In the past it seems that there was a general lack of support for 64 bit release of Kubuntu but it is to be expected that after all this time the support has improved.

So, how are things in the 64 bit linux world? Is it stable? How well populated is the apt repositories? And what about hardware support?

[lurch]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Hi
I have installed 64 bit Flight 7 and it seems to work OK.
I have found a few silly problems but i was able to work around these.
I would suggest giving it a try and see how you get on and report any problems.
Adept lists 4294 available packages.
I have a home built box with an 939A8X motherboard (I have had problems with the onboard ULi network and sound in FreeBSD got round it with pci cards and disabled onboard I do not know what Linux support is like for the onboard chips)
AMD 64 3200. 1MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 440-8X Graphics.

[askrieger]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Dapper is clearly still a work in progress. I am running Breezy AMD64 (with the K8 kernel) and Synaptic lists 17,366 packages available. This is still less than i386.

[GreatBunzinni]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Dapper is clearly still a work in progress. I am running Breezy AMD64 (with the K8 kernel) and Synaptic lists 17,366 packages available. This is still less than i386.

That's a shame. The lack of packages available through the apt repositories is what forces me to run the i386 version on my Athlon64.

I've browsed a couple of packaging tutorials. Would it make any difference if the users submitted their own packages to the repositories?

[askrieger]

Re: General 64 bit support?

In order to submit packages to the Universe repository, you would have to qualify as a "Master of the Universe". See this Wiki Page: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU

By the way, the presence of over 17,000 packages for AMD64 implies that, in fact, one can set up a very acceptable system, capable of doing almost anything. Many of the packages that are available for i386 and not for AMD64 are closed source, proprietary items that would have to be made available for AMD64 by their originators, e.g. win32codecs. I hope that Dapper, when it is finally released, will add a few things to the AMD64 release, but, personally, I don't feel that the use of my Athlon64 is particularly diminished by a lack of AMD64 software.

[Elez]

Re: General 64 bit support?

now that java is better integrated into kubuntu, does the amd64 bit version come with a firefox plugin?
anybody tried some other proprietary software (skype, ati/nvidia...)?

[sky]

Re: General 64 bit support?

No java plugin yet, just flash...
About proprietary, I'm using nvidia driver easily...

[flabordec]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Is there flash support? I couldn't get flash to work with firefox (or anything else for that matter)

[sky]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Sorry I've mistaken, I didn't found it yet.. Not really looking for it, in fact...

Good luck

[GreatBunzinni]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Well, I've tried the 64bit release of Dapper. It seemed to work perfectly but then I had to uninstall it. The thing is, my WiFi card isn't supported under linux and the 64bit drivers that Acer provides aren't useable by ndiswrapper. So that means that 64bit linux on this laptop isn't here yet.

But truth be told, I haven't found a single extra glitch with the 64bit version, which is always nice.

[asheron]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Is there flash support? I couldn't get flash to work with firefox (or anything else for that matter)

yes my child this is becuz, there s no flash for 64-bit systms, macromedia has not yet, probably will not release it. although there is a project in work, it is called gnash research it, u can compile it for yourself, and voila u can hav ur own flash in 64! i warn u it is a bit choppy, and has no sound!

[richard_ablitt]

Re: General 64 bit support?

To get flash working on 64 bit, you can also install the windows version of firefox using wine (this howto for installing wine worked for me: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185557).

[LaneLester]

Re: General 64 bit support?

By the way, the presence of over 17,000 packages for AMD64 implies that, in fact, one can set up a very acceptable system, capable of doing almost anything.

Heck! Mailwasher Pro, which I bought and depend on, is only available in i386 versions. The company is doing a good job of supporting Linux (and me personally), so I'm going to ask them about the prospects before I downgrade my Kubuntu.

Lane

[nevaziah]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Why do they call it AMD64-bit? does it ONLY work on AMD 64bit or would it work on say , a conroe or a Pentium D 805?

[dibl]

Re: General 64 bit support?

Nope. Stick with the -generic kernel if you run an Intel CPU.