Hello all,

Having problems with SLES 64-bit install on a HP system - sooo - am considering working with the 32-bit version.

But, I also have 64-bit windows that I want to use.

I thought to use the "lilo" so that I could choose the OS I want to boot.

Is it possible to use a 64-bit LILO and have it call a 32-bit OS (which would be Suse SLES) or a 64-bit OS (which would be the Microsoft Vista)?

Is there a better (hint: more stable) boot manager that one an use?

TIA

What makes you think lilo is 64-bit ???. What does "file /???/lilo" (depending on location) produce ?.

I did not say that it was

Am not even sure if it comes with SLES 10 (patch level 2) - the one that can be downloaded from the Suse Site.

However, if you do download a X86_64 from the site, then when you use Grub, it should be 64-bit should it not?

But ...

What I have (or am considering having) is the following

-> SLES 10 (patch level 2) that is 32-bit
-> Windows Vista that is 64-bit.

So, it would seem that I would need a 64-bit GRUB in order to have both of the OS's accessible (i.e. to choose from either the Windows or the Linux). I am thinking of this because I am not so sure that the 64-bit OS is stable. My HP computer has a SuperMulti DVD Burner with LightScribe Technology CD drive. It does not look as though there is a driver available for Linux from HP. I don't get it :-|

Anyways, that (and that I don't want to be on the "bleeding edge") is the reason why I am looking to switch to 32-bit SLES.

TIA

I am not aware that any bootloader has both 32-bit and 64-bit versions, and I know of no reason they would need to.

Most people do not do anything with PCs that would need 64-bit anything.....

boot loaders are too simple of a program to really require even 32-bit. All it really does it allows you to select an OS to boot into, or another boot loader to hand off the boot process to.

Having both 32-bit and 64-bit OS available in a boot loader is completely fine. For example, I have GRUB and can either boot into 64-bit Linux or 32-bit Windows. It could very well do the opposite, boot into 32-bit Linux or 64-bit Windows. And I don't see why LILO would be so complex that it would need to differentiate between 32 and 64 bit.

Thanks for the information.

Can you please note if it was difficult to install the 64-bit Linux? Did the kernel you use recognize all of the devices you had on your system properly?

For all 64-bit users, there are a couple of common problems regardless of OS. For example Adobe flash won't work since they haven't released any 64-bit plugins. The java web plugin, I believe, is still in development. So that may be a little buggy as well.

For both Windows and Linux, the common/popular solution is to use a 32-bit browse and just use the 32-bit plugins. This would require you to have 32-bit emulation enabled in Linux, which is the case for most distributions.

Another solution in linux if you want to keep a pure 64-bit system is to run a 64-bit browser and use nspluginwrapper to enable your browser to use the 32-bit flash plugin, and then just use the iced tea plugin (64-bit java plugin). Another solution for flash is to use one of the open source projects --- gnash or swfdec. To my experience, the open source projects aren't as good since not enough of the flash code has been released, and in order for them not to keep the project alive, legally, is for them to keep everything clean, that is they can't install and reverse engineer adobe's flash plugin.

One last solution is to chroot into a 32-bit environment, and then just launch any programs that need to be in 32-bit in that environment.

Other than those, I personally haven't run into any problems with my hardware. Actually, I had more problems getting Windows Vista 64-bit version to work than Linux 64-bit version. My sound card, M-Audio Revolution 5.1, doesn't have 64-bit drivers. But M-Audio has released enough information for alsa drivers to be made. So I get sound in 64-bit Linux, but not 64-bit Windows.

Just note that support for 64-bit support varies from distro to distro. In Gentoo, I had quite a bit of problems with 64-bit since everything was marked as unstable, and some of the software marked as stable seemd unstable to me. I had a mixed bunch of unstable/stable 32- and 64-bit programs running which caused a lot of problems. In Archlinux though, everything is going well with absolutely no problems.

---Edit---
Oh, Archlinux and Gentoo both don't have hardware detection. You configure the system yourself. However, I don't think there should be a problem in SuSe. Although someone with more experience with that particular distro may want to chime in.

Thank you so much for your input

From what you have said, I think I will go ahead and try the 32-bit installation. The system can boot the "Disk 1" but during the installation, it says to "Input Disk #1 into the CD drive" - or something like that. When I do it, it says that it does not recognize the drive.

Also, I have been seeing a lot of threads about 64-bit performance issues as well :-(

I guess I am kind of hoping that it will have a bit more luck in working with/recognizing the CD that is on my machine. I thought that Suse had autodetection - which was why I had stuck with it all of these years. It seemed to make the installations almost as simple as Microsoft.

Unfortunately, this last one I downloaded is starting to remind me of the Slackware days when everything was tricky :-(