Mark Constable posted <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, excerpted below, on Thu, 14 Apr 2005 20:09:25 +1000:
> Forgive my serious level of cluelessness but what practical benefit is > that compared to running the occasional 32bit app via the emul libs ? > > I'm trying to weigh up whether I should burn another week in a, so far, > fruitless exercise of upgrading. Well, in all honesty, not a lot. The primary benefit of 2005.0 is in preparation for 2005.1, which will be better in this regard (probably ~amd64 level, as I put it in my other response, which see for the sordid details <g>). As to whether it's worth the upgrade now... That depends. 2005.0 is a difficult upgrade, no question about it. 2005.1 and full multilib will likely be similarly difficult, but in different areas. While staying with 2004.3 will certainly be the easiest at this point, do you /really/ want to try the task of upgrading TWO difficult levels at the SAME time, when 2005.1 comes out? I know *I* don't! However, there's probably some middle ground. Hopefully, by the time 2005.1 gets into betatest mode (that is, by the time you see posts mentioning test stages and/or profiles), one would /hope/ the problems with the 2004.3->2005.0 upgrade have all been mapped out and solved. At that point, that upgrade ///might/// be easier, allowing you to do it, and then the 2005.1 upgrade, which should indeed be worth the trouble, for anyone doing 32-bit at all, later. Three other comments: One: I've no data on this but it's somewhat reasonable that the upgrade might be easier if running the latest packages, which of course means ~amd64. The upgrade wasn't easy here, but I did it (using the manual not the scripted method BTW), and I'm running ~amd64. Again, as any statistician will agree, one upgrade makes an anecdote, not a trend, but I know I've seen outdated "stable" versions of something or other be the cause of issues before, and I know what I run... Two: There's always the possibility of staying with your current profile until it's depreciated, at which point a recommended alternative is provided, along with support (to the extent possible in a community distribution) for the upgrade. Since I'm a leading-edge guy, that's not an option I'd find conceivable, but there's another point to bringing it up as well. Until that happens, any urgency in upgrading is your own -- you pick the best time, and there's the ability to give up and try again later, if desired. Three: If you aren't using and don't expect to be using 32-bit libs or apps any time in the near future (into 2005.1, anyway), there's always the 2005.0/nomultilib profile and option. I've not looked at the consequences of switching to that re moving back to multilib in the future, but it's possible it'd solve the profile update issues today, again, **IF** you don't use 32-bit (save for grub, where there's the statically linked bin package available) anyway. -- Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs. "Every nonfree program has a lord, a master -- and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman in http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html -- [email protected] mailing list
