+2


Mike

32-bit reporting. I always stay a few years behind the hardware curve.
2GB RAM works for me....I was born in '67, and my C2D qualifies as a supercomputer, so I'm set.
32-bit, no plans to change that.

32 bit is my only option for my out of date computers, I do stay up to date with current.

I am also using one 32 bit install.

Hello,

Sorry to step into this thread so late, but I didn't pay much attention to it before =)

I am running a bunch of slackware instances for different purposes. My main desktop systems are 3: office pc, home desktop, home laptop. And I run the three possible variants of slackware on them:

- office desktop is a Slackware64 with 32-bit multilibs (gotta run Adobe Reader, etc.)
- home desktop is a 32bit slackware (on 64 bit hardware)
- home laptop is a pure Slackware64 without 32bit anywhere

I think there's still need for a full 32bit system, both for old hardware and for those situations when you know that you will only be running third-party 32bit stuff, and everything should always be repackaged with convert32.

I have an atom itx machine which uses 32 bit slackware as a media center

Maybe an official option to boot a 64 bit kernel could be added to 32 bit Slackware? I think of an additional choice just like the existing smp and nonsmp kernels. The Linux kernel officially supports such a configuration.

Advantages: You can a run a 32 bit system (for whatever reason) on a 64 bit CPU without the >896 MB RAM performance penalty. And you have an official way to boot a 32 bit Slackware on a pure UEFI sytem without the CSM.

This sounds indeed like an interesting option, especially when it comes to the UEFI part.

You could already do this. Just grab the 64-bit kernel and modules packages from Slackware64 (e.g. kernel-generic-3.2.29-x86_64-1 and kernel-modules-3.2.29-x86_64-1 on 14.0) and install these instead of their 32-bit counterparts.

I know, I already tried this. But this is neither well tested nor officially supported by Slackware. The "instead" is indeed the first problem, because the files from the 32 and 64 bit kernel packages are overwriting each other.

An official 64 bit kernel package would be installable beside the existing kernels without conflicts and have a well-tested configuration optimized for running a 32 bit distribution on a 64 bit processor.

And why do you need both the 32-bit and 64-Bit kernels installed? Do you imagine you will flip back and forth between them regularly?

The questions that come to my mind here:
- If I understand that correctly, some UEFI systems do not support 32 bit installations?
- What (if anything) must be different from the standard 64 bit kernel if I want to use a 64 bit kernel in place of a 32 bit one?
- Is there any (somewhat common) use case where 32 and 64 bit kernels should be available on the system?

It's great to have a fallback selectable via the boot loader, when you stumble upon software (like VirtualBox), which isn't compatible with this configuration.

UEFI itself is either 64 bit only or 32 bit only on x86. This is at the choice of the firmware vendor, not of user. Of course, all mainstream PC UEFI firmwares go for 64 bit, because only this is supported by Windows. The only way to get into real mode (and from there into a CPU mode of your choice) is the CSM, which emulates a BIOS.

That's a good question, that I can't answer. Linux kernel configuration is a whole science for itself. In the 1.2/2.0 days, where I regularly built kernel configurations from scratch, I knew what about 80 % of the options meant, today it's more the opposite. :-)

I use 32bit slack on eeePC and a few Pentium4 servers at work.

I use a lot of 32 bit machines.