Hello,

I'm running Slackware version 13 and will upgrade to 13.1. I have to decide whether to run in 32 bit or 64 bit mode. My first priority is stability and ease of installing new software. I assume I'll be able to run either version immediately after installation. I'm a little worried about adding software not on the DVD. The questions are:

1. Does every package from Slackbuild come in both 32 and 64 bit versions?

2. Do many or most other software that I may want (like a driver for Nvidia )
come in 32 and 64 bit versions.

Thanks in advance

klee12

Most things do actually work the same in 64 bit land. One specific issue that I came across though was Skype. You can trick it to install on a 64 bit system, but it may not work correctly. The reason I say trick is that by default sbopkg will refuse to install it.

I have it installed but have not used it much. One version would crash when trying to retrieve a message. A new version didn't have that problem, but I haven't used it much either. I have not tried video capabilities as I do not have a webcam.

Oh yeah, there is no native flash plugin for 64 bit. There was, but as of the last update they discontinued it.

I might be having success because I configured my system as multilib as well. By default this is not the case. You have to manually make your system multilib in Slackware.

Nvidia does provide a 64 bit driver.

For the most part packages can be re-compiled to run on the 64-bit platform and things that are binary like VMware and nVidia drivers come in 32-bit and 64-bit packages. While this is my first time running on the 64-bit platform, the only issues with 64-bit that I have come across are wine and Adobe Acrobat Reader, as well as Adobe Flash. To use wine with 32-bit Windows apps, you will need to go multilib and compile wine as 32-bit. To get Acrobat Reader to work, you will need multilib and for Flash you can either use the 64-bit version with security flaws or wait for lame Adobe to fix the flaws.

The main advantage to 64-bit is that IN THEORY it can take better advantage of your processor by processing larger chunks of data (yes, this is horribly simplified and not absolutely correct, but I'm trying to make it easily understandable), therefore effectively being faster, and the ability to address more than 4 GB ram.

Realistically, there isn't an actual advantage to 64-bit, since performance advantage, if there is one, is miniscule in MOST applications. And with the various PAE kernels and whatever other names distros have for them, the memory advantage is nullified until we get past something much larger than most systems have today.

Just now I've noticed wine released 1.2, which supports 64 bit apps. We should hear reports how it works with slack64 soon.

Thanks everyone for your input.

My takeaway is that most things work perfectly but some may not now ... adobe stuff and maybe other stuff. I checked and I think on Slackbuild may not run everything natively. That makes sense because the contributers to the Slackbuild repository may not all have the converted to 64 machines.

I think I'll stick with the 32 bit version for production, but install the 64-bit version in a spare partition and play with it.

How difficult is it to use multilib? Suppose I have a 64 bit system and want to run a 32 bit app. Is it just a matter of sticking a line or two in a Makefile?

Thanks for your help.

klee12

The initial setup is not difficult at all. You just follow Alien Bob's instructions.

The whole point of multilib is that for some packages (notably the libraries), you have both a 64-bit version and a 32-bit compatibility version installed. That means that installing security updates gets an extra step. You upgrade the 64-bit package as normal, then you download the 32-bit package, convert it to a 32-bit compatibility package, and upgrade the 32-bit compatibility package.

Building 32-bit software on a multilib system does not usually work for me. I usually use a 32-bit installation in Virtualbox for that. However, most of the 32-bit software I want to run is either binary-only, or available prebuilt. For Wine I just use Alien Bob's prebuilt binary packages.

And yes, being able to use all 4GB of my RAM does make a performance difference.

See here for some other notes:
http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Slackware-FAQ

It's amazing that such a simple, useless thing as flash keeps people from using 64-bit.

It works but you can only run 64 bit Windows apps in it.

Now that sounds fun doesn't it?

Lets try Firefox for example

This contains the latest Firefox and includes a x86_64 Windows version
http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.o.../latest-trunk/

Ok lets grab that and try and install it ....

Oops someone forgot to use a 64bit installer to package it.

This failure is repeated by every package creator including Microsoft themselves.

Unfortunately, many sites that stream video and audio use flash.
This is a poor choice, as there are many alternatives that are less resource intensive (at least on linux) than using flash.
From what I have read, gnash is still not a suitable drop in replacement for flash.

For the record:
I hate flash! I use flashblock on firefox to block flash on all websites ... except the few where I may want to watch some videos.
Those blinking, bleeping, pulsating, strobe-light-like flash adds that are all too ubiquitous on websites today drive me nuts! Plus, they needlessly hog my CPU!

For many sites, like youtube, you can get extensions or use greasemonkey to download the videos and watch them offline (safer, faster, more stable). Gnash is kinda crappy, but it actually does work for a number of sites. I don't use gnash or flash, just too unstable. Haven't had FF crash since I uninstalled them (maybe once or twice, but it's much more rare).

Are you saying this from personal experience? I haven't tried it myself but they claim....

"There are now two flavors of Wine prefixes, 32-bit and
64-bit. 32-bit prefixes only support 32-bit applications, while
64-bit prefixes support both 32-bit and 64-bit applications. The
prefix flavor is set at prefix creation time and cannot be changed
afterwards, since all the files and registry entries are in
different locations. Backwards compatibility is ensured by
considering all prefixes created with older Wine versions to be
32-bit."

Tested myself.

In a 32/64bit environment that is the case but Slackware64 is a pure 64bit environment and as such only 64bit binaries will work.

There is actually a configure switch to enable the 64bit only mode and Slackware64 needs this or wine will not compile as there is no 32bit component in the build system to build that half of wine.

Thanks to all. I'm learning about what's out there. Looks like the 64 bit OS is not as mature as I would like. Are there plans to move multilib into the official Linux distribution?

klee12

I am assuming that a multilib environment such as mine wouldn't have any problem with this.