On 9/10/06, Hal V. Engel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Saturday 09 September 2006 19:06, Tony Pelton wrote: > > i don't know if FlightGear is 64 bit clean ? > > > > that would be issue #1. > > I can confirm that FG is 64 bit clean. I run it almost every day on my > machine. It is solid and builds cleanly on an amd64 machine with gcc 3.4.x > and 4.1.x.
that is good to know. > > > > i recently built my NEW AMD-64 x2, and am using Kubuntu. > > > > when i was doing my research, deciding if i should go with the 64 bit > > OS, it seemed to be pretty clear to me from my research, and from > > others posting to various boards askings the 64 bit question, that 64 > > bit is really still kind of a pain for "user" desktop machines. > > A year ago there was some validity to the above statement ... when i was doing my research, it was admittedly cursory, and i was researching it via the (K)ubuntu forums, since that was the distro i was targeting. being a current (at work) and former (at home, until i rebuilt my new machine a month ago) Gentoo guy, i will also comment that you need to take a forum posts on Gentoo.org about how things are "easy" with a grain of salt. ;) > > I also think this depends on the distro to some extent. sure. > Gentoo is solid and I > have heard that the same is true for SuSE, i just went and took a quick poke at the gentoo package database. if you sort on the amd64 arch, i'm seeing a whole lot of "~" in the amd64 column. and SuSE, well, i tried to use SuSE for 6 months or so, and went back to Gentoo. abysmal ... > > > > finding software is more of a hassle, and trying to do 32 bit/64 bit > > libraries and layers is a hassle. > > The few things that are not 64 bit capable are > supported through the 32 bit compatibility layer and 32 bit versions of the > apps. > Many distros now have a solid 32 bit compatibility layer and the > number of issues with this are minimal. well, i'm certainly not speaking from experience, and i'm really not trying to debate, but i think the thing the i gleaned from my research, was that there were enough issues with software i was surely going to want to use, that *anyone* would probably want to use, that you had to maintain the 32 bit layers, and therein was the crux of the issue for me, which was that it was _another_ chunk-o-stuff i had to keep up to snuff in order to get my OS to do what i wanted ... and i just wasn't up for any challenges anymore, i wanted a setup that would "just work" for me, after years of using Gentoo, which requires a great deal of TLC. and having said that, i'll throw a quick plug out there for Kubuntu. all i have to say is, WOW ! it just _works_ ! > > One easy way to figure out if your apps will work on an amd64 machine in 64 > bit mode is to go to the Gentoo packages database http://packages.gentoo.org/ > and look up your apps. In the amd64 column if you see a + or a ~ then you > are good to go. that is an arguable assertion. hopefully you aren't basing you assertion that amd64 is good to go on Gentoo because you see alot of "~" statuses in the package database. "~" with Gentoo doesn't mean you are "good to go", it means one of the devs has gotten an e-build to work, and they've put it in the package tree, and maybe some testing has been done. implied with that is that the software itself might be marginally wonky, or usually worse, it has dependecies on stuff that is also "~", and pretty soon, you find out that you are running a more "unstable" than "stable" Gentoo system. > A + means that the app is considered stable and fully tested > and a ~ means the devs have tested it and that they want users to test it > before marking it stable. I have yet to have an issue with an app marked ~ > (testing). Out of about 600 apps/libraries installed on my machine perhaps a > dozen are marked ~amd64. FlightGear is one of these. I should also add that > many that are not marked +amd64 or ~amd64 will still build and run on an > amd64 machine. This just means that no one has tested this specific app yet. ymmv .. > > > > > and many people seemed to make the same comment, that generally, they > > didn't feel like there was much sense of a big gain for the trouble > > Typically apps will run 15% to 25% faster in 64 bit mode on the same hardware. > Some, like those that use 64 bit integers or that do lots of floating math > using doubles, will see larger improvements in performance. I remember > seeing one test with an encoding app that did lots of computations that > involved 64 bit integers being 400% faster in 64 bit mode on the same > hardware. yeah ... and when i was poking around, i definetly saw people commenting that there were certainly things that seemed to get a real bang out of the 64 bit support. i can't help but think, right now, my AMD64-X2 4800+ probably isn't going to run out of wind running in 32 bit mode, at least for a little while. i appreciate the comments. i actually left some wiggle room on the disks on my new machine, thinking that at some point, i might try to get a 64bit root partition up and running with Kubuntu, to see how it goes. you've convinced me that maybe i need to give that a shot sooner rather than later. > > Hal Tony ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Using Tomcat but need to do more? Need to support web services, security? 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