Although quite noob in all of this, I felt this question was more "general" than "newbie." Is there any rhyme or reason to move to an x64 Linux OS right now?

I recently built an AMD 5000+ X2 64 comp and installed Mepis 6.5 x64. The good news is that the system is fast, and I like what Mepis has done out-of-box. The bad news is that I can't get most of the things I want.. installed. To my knowledge:

• Adobe hasn't released an official x64 compatible flash plugin for Firefox (myspace, youtube has no sound)
• Beryl is having serious issues in Mepis 6.5 64 (even though it comes pre-installed). When I try to launch the mgmt console, it logs me out.
• VirtualBox seems to favor 32, but has released a compatible version for Ubuntu Feisty 64. Mepis 6.5 utilizes "Dapper" distros.
• GimpShop isn't compatible with 64 architecture at all (apparently). The install detects the architecture and aborts.
• I haven't figured out how to get my Panasonic Camcorder to work via USB (for picture extraction).

Should I simply go back to a 32-bit OS where most of these issues are resolved or should I just switch Distros and get away from Mepis? I know Mepis 7.0 is due out soon and it's back to the debian distro, so perhaps it will have better compatibility.

Anyone have any positive experiences with Mepis x64?

Thanks

If you want, you can create a partition for a 64bit distro and one for a 32 bit distro.

You can use the 32bit distro as your main OS, while you use the 64bit distro for experimentation like 64bit compatibility.

For example, if you install software from source, you can add a parameter for 64bit
support to the configure script, if supported.

Mepis is a good distribution. Before you uninstall mepis, had you tried the mepis forums? Most distros have their own forums for issues for their OS.

Good luck

You can try other distributions than Mepis too, there are several that are at least as easy to use as Mepis, and several that offer everything Mepis does (and maybe more). Or if you're happy with it, don't change.

64-bit machines are becoming more and more general, but still there are not enough applications yet that support the 64-bit architecture fully, and thus your system can't take the full advantage of it. Instead many applications seem to either prefer or only work in 32-bit environment as of now. It taks time before most of the software runs on 64-bit systems well, and in the mean time you can't do much but wait. At present I would advice keep using 32-bit operating system, as it works notably better (overall) than 64-bit OS. When the software begins to work properly on 64-bit, and there is enough software that works on it and makes use of it, you can always switch. Most of the time all I hear from 64-bit system desktop users is crying because "everyday things" like Adobe Flash doesn't work.

The movement from 16-bit to 32-bit took some time too, and so this 32 -> 64 will too. How long, it depends on the developers, but I'd say any 64-bit machine you buy today will be well old before it's co-operating with the software well. I'd stick with 32-bit systems, multi-processing units if you like, to get something useful, instead of 64-bit systems. Of course, if you have a machine dedicated to do something that requires 64-bit system and it's programs work flawlessly on 64-bit, it's definitely not bad, but for most desktop end-users it's no good until later. Maybe a few years from now and we don't even remember what 32-bit systems were..

Thanks for the comments DV and B0uncer. I guess, for now, I'll partition the drive and install the x32 version of Mepis. Recent news released about Mepis 7.0 w/ KDE 4.0 seem to address most of the issues I'm whining about... so perhaps I'll reconsider using the x64 after 7.0 is released. Ubuntu is my alternative as well... but that would just be following the bandwagon and I have to be different!!

As you can see from my sig, I also have a 64 bit cpu, but I use a 32 bit OS. Hopefully, some day all apps will utilize the 64bit OS.

true, true...