On Mon, Sep 27, 2010 at 10:30:12PM +0200, Fritz Meissner wrote: > On 27 September 2010 22:26, Josh Lawrence <hardbop200@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Hi everyone, > > > > I'm late to the party when it comes to 64-bit machines, so apologies > > in advance if I am asking something that should be obvious... > > > > I recently purchased a 64 bit machine and like it a lot, but I've > > noticed that some software that is usually available on a 32 bit > > machine isn't available in the 64 bit repos that I am using. Can I > > install the 32 bit version of my distro (Debian) on my 64 bit machine? > > I'm assuming that would give me access to all 32 bit software. It > > would also be a performance hit, correct? > > > Yes, you can install the 32 bit version. From what I have heard, the > performance difference is not significant, but the major benefit of 64 > bit is being able to address more than 4 GB of memory, which is the > limit of what a 32 bit OS can use. One advantage to 64-bit machines is that there are more CPU registers available in 64-bit mode, so some processing goes faster, and more addressable memory. That may be reason enough to run a 64-bit kernel while keeping a 32-bit userland (libraries, applications, etc.) Which some (including myself) do. The advantage of 32-bit software is a smaller memory footprint (e.g. 32 bits to represent an integer instead of 64). There is a much wider software availability, and fewer compatibility issues. Although many say "64-bit is well established, no need to worry about compatibility", I've had a few run ins. At one point, I was maintaining two parallel Debian systems, one 32-bit and one 64-bit, to track down such issues. Some disadvantages to mixed systems, from the amd64 faq at http://alioth.debian.org/docman/view.php/30192/21/debian-amd64-howto.html Q: I want to run i386 userland with a 64bit Linux kernel A: Running 32bit userland with a 64bit kernel is recommended only for servers needing the absolute stability of 10 years of 32bit debian, but without the memory limitations the IA32 architecture bears, for example a 64bit mysql server on a system with 8GB or 16GB memory. Running the mixed setup on a workstation is not recommended, because iptables, the XFS filesystem, non-free NVidia and ATI binary drivers do currently not support it. Iptables *does* appear to work for me in mixed environment, at least the user interface part. Cheers, Joel > Fritz -- Joel Roth _______________________________________________ Linux-audio-user mailing list Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
