On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, Brad Knowles wrote: > on 3/16/09 11:20 PM, [email protected] said: > >>> It depends on what you're doing. Some applications have not yet been >>> ported to 64-bit, and may not run correctly on a machine that has a >>> 64-bit kernel. Other applications may run better in 64-bit mode. You >>> need to know your specific application. >> >> do you have any specific examples? the last usespace program that I ran >> into with this sort of bug was the ipchains binary, and that was fixed >> several years ago. > > I've heard of no end of problems with precompiled binaries provided by > vendors for things like Flash, Nvidia drivers, etc....
using a 32 bit flash as a plugin to a 64 bit browser is an issue. that issue ended up getting resolved by people figuring out that you could use ndiswrapper to run flash (and several distros do this by default now). this doesn't make flash stable (does anything??), but it does mean that when flash locks up it doesn't crash the browser, so you can do a graceful exit when you want to. there is a 64 bit flash in alpha status right now. I'm running it on my laptop and it crashes once in a while, taking the browser down with it. I'm not sure it's a win, but I'm continuing to run it to be a beta-tester and encourage Adobe to support linux better. java brwser plugins are in a similar situation, but are not quite as bad. Sun has a 64 bit java in beta. it's a but ugly to get setup as a plugin, but seems far more stable. as for nVidia, binary drivers are a nightmare in any case, they are distro and kernel version specific, and they tie in directly to the kernel address space. don't try to use them with any kernel they weren't directly tested with (and this includes not using them with an distro kernel update if they weren't made specificly for that update). > Admittedly, that's a more workstation-oriented issue as opposed to a server > problem, but it's certainly a valid class that may be of potential concern. > And anywhere else you've got a pre-compiled binary you have to deal with, is > a potential source of problems. I'm not trying to say that you don't have valid concerns, but I have been running 32 bit code on 64 bit kernels for quite a while (both server and workstation), including in high-volume production settings (the vendor hadn't gotten around to releasing a 64 bit version yet), and I have found things to be very reliable. if you are going to have problems, I would expect to see them in things that try to muck directly with the kernel (CD burning software, userspace device drivers, etc. things that are linux-only, and frequently version and/or distro specific). applications that are portable across platforms give me no problems, even demanding applications like databases David Lang _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
