Reasons you use 32-bit Slackware or not

WiseDraco · 02-10-2013, 03:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrogeek

Yes, 64 is here - and that is a good thing! I certainly did not mean to imply that availability of 64 bit hardware was a negative thing! But I am still waiting for the day that we can rely on getting actual, useful benefits, as opposed to glitter and flash, from those dizzying hardware specs on our desktops - and that will require better discipline and knowledge level on the part of those who write the code that runs on them - and that trend is not often hopeful in my personal opinion... (but I am certainly no expert either!)

Much of my professsional career was involved with the development and support of motion control and receiver systems for many of the world's large telescopes, radio telescopes in particular. It was the perfect marriage of passion and profession! Hence, astrogeek...

I play with Celestia sometimes as a planetarium of sorts, and use a few ephemerides, but prefer to sit out with my 8" Celestron or a good pair of binoculars and paper charts... or just close my eyes and go places, still the best hardware platform!

i think too , a last years hardware race is absolutely not necessary - it is consumer politics, as in all over the world in novadays. i start my path in PC compatibles about 1994 with 286 12 MHz with 8 mhz math coprocessor and 1 Mb RAM - before that i own two Spectrum - compatibles. really in last 10 years we see very big hardware gain - a years ago 4 Mb RAM will be very ok and comfortable to use, 64 Mb will be for "large servers"

now 2 Gb is bit a small for desktop... as hardware grow in quality, the same time programming skills and style do another - go the badder and badder, imho.
about your work - happy for you

celestron 8" - from one side, many use catadioptrics, and also SCT, even Arthur Clarke used them, but on another side - catadioptrics, and especially SCT have many bad sides -long thermostabilization time, large central obstruction, small light throughtput ( 3 mirrors + corrector ) and so on. actually, i think, it has only one advantage - small size for aperture....why you choose cat over a good newtonian?
i have a two cheap apo of 66 and 100mm, and 8" orion optics old newt, from who i not be very happy - maybe going to sell newt

who is about bike? i, on my old days, in last year going after a bikes category licence, bought xj600 yamaha

PS sorry for offtopic, but cannot find a possibility to send private messages or so on on that forum...

irgunII · 02-10-2013, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kikinovak

I think you got something wrong here. In my business, I badly depend on 32-bit Slackware, since most of the time, I have to install client desktops on existing hardware that's actually quite ancient. Think "PCs that were new around 2005, sometimes even 2001". That's also one of the chief arguments for using Slackware, since it belongs to those happy few of distros whose installer won't choke on ancient hardware.

On my website there's a page explaining to folks how they can keep their old hardware as long as it won't die and still install a highly usable Linux system on it. You'll see that minimum specs are quite low:

http://www.microlinux.fr/votre_materiel.php

I'm running this offer in partnership with a local vendor for refurbished hardware (http://www.plusdepc.com/) and it's quite popular among clients.

No, no...I'm all *for* keeping 32 bit around. You have to read my whole post and take it as a whole (I write for crap, sorry). What you wrote above is what I was basically saying in my post.

psionl0 · 02-10-2013, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yaakov Ben-Avraham

I have consistently been unable to boot 64-bit Slackware (both 13.37 and 14.0)
from extended partitions on the third system with a 64-bit CPU. The two
64-Bit Slackware O/S boot just fine from primary partitions.

My bootable partition is a primary partition but it runs WinXP (I use it about once a year when I do my taxes

). I'm not sure that you can make an extended partition bootable but my Slackware is entirely in extended partitions.

LILO just instructs the MBR which address to read from the HD on bootup. I don't think it takes into account whether the address resides in a primary or extended partition.

astrogeek · 02-10-2013, 11:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiseDraco

...about your work - happy for you

Thank you. I have not been able to travel freely since about 2001, so have missed being on-site for a while. I was getting too old to climb around on the structures anyway, so just as well! But I do miss it...

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiseDraco

celestron 8" ...i think, it has only one advantage - small size for aperture....why you choose cat over a good newtonian?

Like my thrift-store computers, it is not so much by choice as by circumstance. But still, the 8" SCT is a very nice little scope - much better than none at all!

I had a very nice big Newtonian in a previous life, I miss it too!

If/when sanity returns to the earth, I'll have another, bigger and better... but not much hope for the near future I fear.

We had better stop the OT posts - should be able to PM me here though. Thanks.

WiseDraco · 02-11-2013, 01:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by astrogeek

We had better stop the OT posts - should be able to PM me here though. Thanks.

who i discovered, looks like PM is disabled function in this site - cannot find "send PM" options.
can you send me email to john At sten %dot% lv ?

NyteOwl · 02-11-2013, 01:03 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by WiseDraco

who i discovered, looks like PM is disabled function in this site - cannot find "send PM" options.
can you send me email to john At sten %dot% lv ?

I find Cat's more convenient and flexible to carry and use, if somewhat inferior to Newtonian.

Re PM, if you click on the username at the left and scroll to the bottom of the page you have the option of leaving a message via e-mail.

TobiSGD · 02-11-2013, 03:01 PM

To be able to use PMs on this site you need a postcount of 150 or higher. So WiseDraco needs 21 more posts

.

astrogeek · 02-11-2013, 03:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

To be able to use PMs on this site you need a postcount of 150 or higher. So WiseDraco needs 21 more posts

.

Thanks, I had not noted that before. I have sent him my contact info.

@NyteOwl - there are often astronomy related posts here and obviously you have an interest too. Perhaps one of us should start a "How do you use Slackware for your astronomy interests?" thread... might be interesting and informative!

TobiSGD · 02-11-2013, 03:40 PM

Alternatively you can create an Astronomy group using LQ's "Social Groups" feature, I know of at least one other member that is not using Slackware but is highly interested in Astronomy.

salemboot · 02-11-2013, 08:43 PM

Got one for you, Cedar Trail,. The driver is 32-bit only.
The thing will run 64 bit os's but there is no hardware acceleration.

kooru · 02-12-2013, 02:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TobiSGD

Alternatively you can create an Astronomy group using LQ's "Social Groups" feature, I know of at least one other member that is not using Slackware but is highly interested in Astronomy.

me too!

ruario · 02-21-2013, 02:57 PM

Rented VPS account with a low amount of RAM. Performance is therefore better with 32-Bit Slackware.

01micko · 02-21-2013, 06:51 PM

I am one of the many who have a pentium-M processor with 400MHz FSB so not only can't run 64 bit but I must run the alternate non-PAE kernel on installation. It's an IBM R51 with 14.0 installed with kikinovak's MLED modifications, runs and looks nice (xfce) !

On my other laptop I'm running 64 -current and it's only 1BG RAM, goes ok though with KDE-4.10.

---------- Post added 02-21-13 at 07:51 PM ----------

I am one of the many who have a pentium-M processor with 400MHz FSB so not only can't run 64 bit but I must run the alternate non-PAE kernel on installation. It's an IBM R51 with 14.0 installed with kikinovak's MLED modifications, runs and looks nice (xfce) !

On my other laptop I'm running 64 -current and it's only 1BG RAM, goes ok though with KDE-4.10.

baldheaded-yeti · 02-21-2013, 07:52 PM

Running Slackware 14 32 bit for a file server on an older computer.

MadMaverick9 · 02-21-2013, 08:57 PM

What's the reason to use 64-bit?

I have 3gb ram. And even when I run firefox, pidgin, libreoffice and slackbuild chromium, Windows 7 in a VMware VM, Apache httpd, mysql, etc., my ram usage barely goes above 1gb (according to conky and htop). I guess the remaining 2gb are used by the Linux kernel for caching, so they're not entirely wasted. And I guess using FVWM helps.

So for desktop machines I personally do not see the need for 64-bit.

And one thing nobody has mentioned yet - there is one day in the future when it will become necessary and justified to go 64-bit. That day is 19-January-2038.

Till then ... I am perfectly happy with 32bit.