Alright after fighting with some very annoying pieces of imcompatibility I'm stuck at a cross roads. The choice wether to use the 64bit version of Ubuntu or the 32bit one. I have the 64bit version installed and configured now but I'm running into major problems, the biggest and most annoying two would be Flash Player and Java. Neither of these seem to want to work on a 64bit system and they aren't the only ones.

I wanted to know how many of you out there have decided to roll your system back to the 32bit version and how many stuck with the 64bit (doesn't have to be Ubuntu specific, any 64bit build will do) What are the benifits and losses and basically what should I do? Should I go back to something that works 100% with no issues or should I stay the way I am now and use my entire processor?

Hi.

I've never tried any 64-bit distros (partly because I don't have a 64-bit processor!), so I apologize in advance if my opinions aren't wanted here.

As I said, I haven't had any personal experience with 64-bit, but I have had quite a lot with 32-bit Ubuntu. For this reason, I'm surprised that you've had trouble with the 64-bit version of the distro, although I can see that it has a lot to do with the apps. Were the Flash Player and Java 64-bit apps, or regular 32-bit ones? Whatever they were, did you download them from the Ubuntu repos or from external sites?

I'm just interested to know, that's all...

This article contains a review of SUSE and Fedora 64-bit versions up against Windows 64-bit Pre. It seems that SUSE did quite well - very well, in fact - and I enjoyed reading their conclusions of it at the end.

I'm intruiged to listen to others' comments as well, because I'd like to know what to go for when 64-bit comes to my PC (cliché!), so please keep posting!

J_K9

P.S Article on installing Java 2 on 64-bit Linux
Thread in other forums about Ubuntu/Flash Player

Well Flash Player is just plain unavalible for 64-bit systems. And Java has a 64-bit version but it has no browser support.

I've since given up. The 64bit version does look nice and has decent support and packages, just not enough. 32-bit will do for now and 64bit will have it's time soon.

I'm running FC2-i386 [32-bit version] on my AMD Athlon64 3400 system. All the 64-bit distros have some problems or other. The only stable distros that work problem-free on my 64-bit system are:

1. FC2-i386-the most stable & problem-free & bug-free-a little tweaking fixed the blank
blank screen problem on my laptop
2. Ubuntu 5.04-i386-clearly a superior distro
3. Red Hat Linux 9-Intel 440 x-series bugs and only recognizes 128 MB RAM of
256 MB RAM on my Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 agp8x
graphics card & hates my laptop
4. Red Hat Linux 7.3-good but too old 2002 or before
5. Debian [?]-low resolution and hates Dell Latitude C600 laptops

Any other distro had too many problems. FC2-x86_64 was way too buggy; nautilus/gnome crashed on me as soon as it went to the login screen to enter my user ID & password. Also other problems. Don't even mention FC3-32-bit & 64-bit versions were way way too buggy and way too many problems...the worst of all; nothing but trash! FC4-both 32-bit & 64-bit versions had too many problems and too buggy but they were 10 times better than that trash FC3. Also FC4-both 32-bit & 64-bit versions had the gcc-4.0 compiler that is blacklisted by K3b and other programs. They refuse to compile with gcc-4.0 because gcc-4.0 sometimes miscompiles programs. Also yumex the gui for yum in FC4 stinks big time. It has a real bad memory leak and has all kinds of errors and problems and I got tired of the headache. I would use yumex and my RAM used would be 200 MB and later 400 then 600 then 800+ RAM being used out of 1 GB RAM. So I wanted to use apt & synaptic but it isn't available for the FC4-the 64-bit version but it is for the 32-bit version and even then it didn't work right. FC4 was just way too buggy but still much much better than that trash FC3. So I went back to FC2-the 32-bit version as it works problem-free more or less and FC4 and the other distros could not burn a CD/DVD without errors but FC2-the 32-bit version could so there. FC2-i386 for me and nothing else at least for right now. Debian didn't work right on my laptop. No blank screen problem like the others [no blank screen problem with Ubuntu & Red Hat Linux 7.3] but it went crazy when I would try to do some task or other [forgot which] on my laptop--AND I could not up the low resolution from 800x600 to the normal one of 1024x768 on my 64-bit system and from 800x600 up to the normal resolution of 1400x1050 on my laptop. Now I really like Debian in spite of all this but I cannot use it. Ubuntu had my laptop resolution set to 1400x1050 and I was purely amazed. I had thought my laptop resolution was 1024x768. Boy was I wrong! The 64-bit & 32-bit version of Debian worked fine on my Athlon64 system but the low 800x600 resolution Debian insisted on and I have an expensive LCD monitor and a high-powered graphics card; well, that was ridiculous. How to up the resolution under Debian...well, I have no idea. Also could not burn a decent CD or a DVD under any distro but FC2-i386. Have no idea why. FC2 was the only distro that I could burn a DVD or CD without errors. I would have preferred FC2-x86_64 but had to settle for a 32-bit operating system on my 64-bit system because the 64-bit operating systems were way too buggy and defective and couldn't do anything hardly with them and almost no bug-free software for 64-bit systems. The only one I could reasonably use that was reasonably stable and reasonably problem-free was the 32-bit version of Fedora Core 2 and my brother says the same thing. He even says the same things I just mentioned about all these distros. And DON'T even mention Mandrake. It was the worst of all. Blank screen on my laptop-it was the worst one with the blank screen problem-and would NOT let me dual-boot my Athlon64 system with another distro or even with Windoze XP SP1; and other problems. So there you are.

Red Hat Linux and Fedora Core USED TO BE good distros but no longer. A real shame as I really liked them. The only alternative I see is to build my own do-it-yourself linux distro from scratch with Linux-From-Scratch.

Thanks to Linux for freeing me from Windoze and Micro$oft for more than a year so far. I plan on mailing Windoze XP SP1 to my daughter in Florida. I'm sure she won't mind the headache I'm sending her ha ha!

Yours truly,

Jean Brown Harrell