There is no pain. Even with less than 4GB my old pet flies with Slackware64. Mine is pure since released. Absolutely no regret.

Flash64 is the opposite: sad, ugly and stinks. Prepare to use your middle finger a lot with Square =]

Maybe it depends on the graphics hardware or something...but I haven't had Flash crash on me once since Square was released, and fullscreen 1080p streaming video (assuming the connection can keep up with it) is buttery smooth and crystal clear. I have "OverrideGpuValidation=true" in /etc/adobe/mms.cfg which forces hardware to use acceleration even if it detects it incorrectly...but I don't know if this is obsolete or if it makes a difference anymore (that was set quite a while ago before Square player and I haven't tried it without that file since). It seemed to improve playback at the time but it may have been the placebo effect. Regardless, I haven't been able to complain about Flash for a while now.

I really don't know why we debate stuff like this. If you have a 64-bit machine go with 64-bit; otherwise go with 32-bit.

In Slackware's case, since Slackware64 is 64-bit only, as it should be; if you want to run 32-bit software, go with Slackware; else go with Slackware64 and install multilib.

It all about needs. I have both 32-bit machines and 64-bit machines. Slackware is installed on the 32-bit and Slackware64 is installed on the 64-but machines. One of those 64-bit machines has multilib installed because I need it to run some applications used on that machines.

I have it working on my 64bit Fedora machine as well. However it is wrapped in the ndiswrapper, and eats about 85% of the CPU at any given moment - as it does my cohorts Ubuntu installation, and my Linux Mint VM. Just mentioning that it might serve the original poster well to consider that Flash doesn't play well on *everyones* 64bit installations.

Adobe, here www.adobe.com, says not to use flash in a 64bit web environment. They, "adobe", say that they are currently working on making flash work seamlessly in 64bit but they are not at that point yet.

See here:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/000/6b3af6c9.html

Here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20016620-264.html

And a sort of workaround Here:

http://www.ehow.com/how_4670030_adob...-browsers.html

Hopefully if you do go to 64bit, you won't have any issues with Flash, if you do in fact need it for anything.

Sorry, I still fail to see where Adobe says not to use flash in a 64bit environment.

Adam

I found that my browsing issue was IPv6 and not flash.

There is no need to do this anymore...there was a time (quite a while ago now) when this was necessary, but then Adobe released a 64-bit version of Flash. Then the multiple security vulnerabilities made this a possible solution again while Adobe temporarily discontinued 64-bit Flash support. But, for several months now, Adobe Flash Square Player has been available for pure 64-bit Linux distros and it works fine. Technically it is a 'preview' but it works better than any Flash incarnation I've seen before it, and it certainly outperforms any hacky ndiswrapper solution.
It seems you're mixing up old and new information regarding Flash...I would advise anyone running 64-bit Linux to go grab the latest Flash Square Player preview, since it works very well. Perhaps there is some hardware dependence that I'm not seeing but certainly on my hardware Flash performance now rivals (or exceeds) gstreamer-based HTML5 video.

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Another approach to doing 32-bit, which I use because I still need to test my software in 32-bit ... and be SURE it was operating that way ... is run a replica of a 32-bit Slackware system tree under chroot on a Slackware64 system. A non-root user can run chroot via sudo (add the user to the sudoers list as needed).

Eh, apparently there is a 64-bit preview called Flash-square. If that works ok in 64bit, thats pretty awesome.

... until the next security vulnerability appears that requires everyone to wait for Adobe to fix it and rebuild all the binaries. While Flash is certainly now usable under 64-bit, I still run it only on a jailed browser (which I also do for any binary-only programs that have ever had a security vulnerability).

I wonder what the "square" means in this name? Does it mean one of the Adobe developers finally got their certification in 64-bit?

I had not thought of that one. This would be especially useful on one does not have a 32-bit machine.

The x86_64 architecture includes 32-bit and 16-bit mode support. A 64-bit kernel normally allows processes to run in 32-bit mode. Since the kernel will be viewing in 64-bit mode, it won't be as constrained to view both the process virtual memory and real physical memory at the same time. This is why weird address modes like PAE are now depricated ... if you need to do 32-bit processes on a machine with way more than 4GB of RAM, just run the kernel in 64-bit mode.

been running slackware64 from the start and no problems I did install the multilib but only cos I wanted to run google earth the only 32 bit app I use so go for 64bit every time I say!