Before installing Slack 13.0 I considered the 64 bit version but decided against it because of a warning that not all apps might be available under 64bit. I will test 13.1 hopefully soon, so I wonder what the situation is now with respect to this issue.

I guess it depends on the apps in question. Best to list them here and see what sort of feedback you get on them.

So are they listed someplace or do I read them off the iso disk?

Pretty much the only application I've found that isn't available for 64-bit is Adobe Reader (and that's them, not us). Anything else; i.e., things I normally compile anyway plus anything from SlackBuilds.org, get built from source on both older 32-bit and newer 64-bit platforms and have worker just fine. Robby Workman, who does an outstanding job with many things (as do many others), has OpenOffice ready to go in both flavors -- what could be better, eh? And there's always Multilib from Alien's highly useful work.

Go for it.

@svar: I think dive was asking you to list the 64bit applications you need
obviously the slackware iso doesn't contain all the 64 bit linux apps out there

As far as Open Source goes, the only disadvantage of going 64-bit is that you may not be able to get binaries for all linux apps. In these cases, you have to compile your own. Not a big deal but requires a bit of knowledge in this area.

Cheers, Lou

WINE and GoogleEarth are both 32 bit, are they not?

I am much more happier under 32 bit than 64bit (desktop). must-have 32 bit only application here: skype, adobe-reader
Linux has a lot of compatibility problem with the rest of the world already, if you run 64 bit, even worse will be.
I tell myself to consider 64 bit again in 2 years' time.

it has already been said in this same thread: it is possibile to run 32bit app on 64bit slackware, you only have to go multilib.
I personally run all the apps cited above (and more) on slackware64 with multilib glib/gcc and the default set of 32 bit libraries created by the massconvert script...
I haven't found yet something that doesn't run (probably because I don't use that particular application).

please, stop spreading FUD on 64bit slackware

1 members found this post helpful.

I posted a thread asking how to use scim to input Chinese for 32 bit program under 64 bit slackware with multilib. Could you help?

no, sorry (any experience in that field).

but I can give you just a couple suggestions that may help:
- when you ask questions like this, maybe telling the name of the application and giving additional informations can be useful to understand the problem for who has to answer;
- try to find help also on the apps site/forum/mailing list (your particular app's and scim's ones), the problem could be not related to slackware but to every multilib distribution this apps runs on.

I've had the opposite findings here although admittedly i don't run wine, skype or adobe reader. For me almost everything works fine with 64bit Slackware and the few apps that don't I just ignore or use alternatives. I don't like using binaries anyway and prepare to build my own 64 bit applications from source wherever possible. A few well know applications only supply prebuilt binary packages but practically all of them now have 64 bit versions for Linux.

The difference is particularly relevant if you run with more that 3G of memory as with this you will loose out running 32 bit Linux. I am on the boarder line with 3G of main memory on my machine but certain things seem quicker - although maybe this is a placebo effect.

I think Bgeddy hit the virtual nail on the virtual head.
If you have >3GB or memory you will benefit from 64bit Slack.
I have 2GB of memory. I have both 32bit and 64bit Slack on my desktop on different partitions. The 64bit Slack is "pure" 64bit (i.e., no multilib). I don't notice any real difference in performance between 32bit and 64bit Slack. I have not done any benchmarking tests though. This is just my impression from using both 32bit and 64bit Slackware on my AMD socket 939 Athlon64 3200+ CPU.

For those of you who want to run benchmarking tests on Slackware, try the Phoronix Test Suite:
http://www.phoronix-test-suite.com/

I installed 64bit Slack to see if I could get by with a pure 64bit system and use all the apps I like.
The only real reason I have 32bit Slack installed is because there are some games I like that do not have 64bit versions available.

There isn't really much of a performance benefit in 64-bit Linux unless of course you have > 3 GB of RAM, with the possible exception of specific tasks that can be optimized for 64-bit...though not many are (video encoding is a possible exception). That being said there also isn't really a drawback to 64-bit Linux (excluding the 32-bit binary-only applications that won't run -- but you can always go multilib for that if you want).

I switched to pure 64-bit with 13.0 and I haven't had any problems at all. Basically, I would go with 64-bit unless you need to run 32-bit only binaries (like WINE, Skype, Adobe Reader [which is not the best PDF reader for Linux but certainly the most full-featured], Google Earth, etc.) and are aversed to running a multilib setup.

I've recently upgraded to Slack 13.1 and haven't tested much yet, but in Slack 13.0 I had no trouble whatsoever running Adobe Reader and many 32bit games like UT2004, Prey, World of Goo, Lugaru etc. Wine also works fine as long as you compile it as 32 bit (it is actually possible to compile as 64bit, but kind of worthless since it can't run 32 bit windows programs...)

If you have more then 3 gig of RAM it's really a no-brainer to go with Slack64. Making it multilib (able to run/compile 32 bit) doesn't take more then 15 min and is really simple.

One caveat; I have only experience with nvidia binary drivers (they include 32bit compatibility files) with other cards it may be more tricky getting 32 bit opengl games to work satisfactory.