I am soon going to upgrade my aging Slackware 12.0 installation to Slackware 13 as I have been using 13 for a while on a test partition and trying to get used to KDE 4. The machine only has 3 GB main memory so there is no real need to venture into 64 bit territory - or is there ?

I wondered whether anyone had noticed any speed differences with Slackware 64 with less than 4GB memory ?
Also - is all supporting software (like Flash) now operational in 64 bit mode? I don't really want to have a multilib setup even though it's available.

Please feel free to pass on any comments on your thoughts / findings with this setup i.e. anything doesn't work, any benefits (on a box with less than 4GB memory) and the like.
Oh - and BTW the box has a Core 2 duo E5430 processor and 3GB Ram.
Thanks in advance..

Can't comment on the speed question, I've only used Slack64 on this box which has 4 GB RAM. So I've nothing to compare it to. 64 bit Flash seems OK. Never had any problems of any kind. Well up to the usual Slackware standard.

Multilib is a must for having some specific software such as wine to work. In terms of speed, the only times I felt a difference is when I am compiling from sources. And also, I intensively use Matlab and I noticed that when I run my scripts with the 64-bit version of Matlab in slackware-64, they run faster than their 32-bit counterpart. For example, an optimization algorithm that will take 2 hours in 64-bit will take up to 3 hours in the 32-bit environment. I couldn't myself find any logical explanation for that.

32-bit Slackware's floating point support compiles to the 387 floating-point coprocessor. The x86_64 architecture, on the other hand, guarantees the presence of SSE and SSE2 floating-point operations, which are faster.

More recent 32-bit processors have SSE and SSE2 as well, but Slackware's 32-bit binaries are only compiled to the 486, so they can't make that assumption.

bgeddy,

Go for it! I was reluctant for a long time to go to 64 bit in any distro. Late last year I finally made the jump. Yes. There is a difference in performance and efficient use of resources with Slack64 over older 32 bit versions (I have 2Gig RAM). Yes. Flash, Java, Javascript, etc. all work 100% in my Firefox, Seamonkey, and Opera browsers.

I recommend the huge kernel or a custom compiled one, of you want to go that route. Also, you'll be using the new Slackpkg package manager. It's great! Works like a champ. Very simple to use. Any apps that you need that aren't in the repos will be available at SlackBuilds, just remember to use the prefix "ARCH=x86_64" when running your SlackBuild script, for example:

Have FUN!

Why a huge kernel?

On today's modern systems with lots of space and resources, may as well install the kernel that has EVERYTHING and the kitchen sink. It saves time, in my experience, in the long run. You'll invariably need some added module or driver somewhere down the road when using the generic kernel. Just get it all right off the bat.

DISCLAIMER: I'm sure others will give you a different opinion on this.

I'm running Slackware 13.0 on three machines -- 32-bit on a desk top that has 3GHz processor and 4G RAM and on a laptop that has a 2GHz processor and 1G; 63-bit on a laptop that has a 2.1GHz dual-core processor with 3G RAM. I don't really notice any discernible performance difference between the desktop and the large laptop (the other laptop is old and creaky and doesn't count anymore, it's going to be given to a good home but it performs well).

I install the default kernel (the huge SMP one, I believe) and I do not fool with it. It seems that Slackware is pretty well tuned for efficiency as is, having modules rather than hard-coded kernel seems to work just fine and I choose to simply leave it be. Everything works that should (well, I have removed the Akondi package from all machines just because the thing, whatever it is, doesn't work out of the box and I probably don't want it anyway). You don't even have to generate a xorg.conf file as the thing figures out what to do all by itself if you leave it alone.

I'm impressed, you may be too.

Hope this helps some.

The only difference between huge and generic is compiling everything statically into the kernel or leaving it as a module?
Regardless, the latter is more flexible and maybe a little quicker. Huge is fine for installation, but after that it is just a pain if you ask me. I like to roll my own kernel with each kernel release, just because I like to, but I wouldn't use huge for anything other than installation and troubleshooting regardless.

Just my opinion I guess.

See! I told you there would be different opinions to follow. I love GNU/Linux JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN do it your way.

yep ...

lol

I was surprised at how little difference there was. Run a diff between /boot/config-*huge* and /boot/config-*generic* and you'll see that there aren't many differences--only whether filesystems and weird disk/RAID stuff being built in. Even the huge kernel uses modules for nearly everything as well.

They're both too big if you ask me !