On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:13, Phill Coxon wrote: > > In other words - is there any point in my doing an apt-on-cd backup of > all the updates I've installed to Ubuntu 7.10, or will every package > have to be downloaded again as a 64bit version anyway? > > Thanks.
This is not an exact answer to your question. I recently set up a 64bit computer with Gentoo. Gentoo is source based distribution which downloads the source code and compiles the applications on the computer they are going to be used. This allows applications to customised and optimised according to your wishes. I compiled my applications to run on 64 bit architecture setting one of the compiler flags to; -march=x86-64 Not one of the GPL applications failed to compile. Some third party applications which supply the executable rather than the source code require 32bit emulation to run. Down at the silicon level computing is about manipulating numbers. So anything which allows these numbers to be processed in 64 as opposed to 32 bit chunks has to be a good thing. My advice is go 64 bit as much as possible. Cheers Ross Drummond
