32- versus 64-bit fedora on an AMD 64 mobile athlon?

[John Summerfield]

Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>   moving on, i have a roomful of gateway MX7120 laptops (with AMD
> 64-bit mobile athlon CPU) that i use for linux training and, until
> now, i've just wimped out and installed the 32-bit version of fedora
> on them for my clients, and that works just fine.
> 
>   but i figure, why waste all that 64-bit computing power, so is there
> any compelling reason to *not* upgrade them all to fedora x86_64 for
> those courses?  that is, are there any real show-stoppers when it
> comes to fedora x86_64 that would make that version unusable?
> thanks.
> 
> rday
> 
> p.s.  i'm guessing that, since these things have a broadcom chipset,
> wireless is still going to be an issue as it is with fedora i386 but,
> in my classrooms, these systems are always hardwired so that's not a
> problem for me.  at least, not yet.


I recently acquired a dual-core HP system and installed 64-bit F7.9x on 
it, principally because I may well max it on RAM (its used for running 
virtual machines), and then removed all the 32-bit cruft.

It's not given me any problems, but I have seen recent reports of 
problems with 64-bit firefox and 32-bit plugins. I've also seen reports 
some are resolvable.

_I_ don't rely on it for day-to-day stuff (though I have it trained to 
play MP3s and to stream radio from abc.net.au)

If one of your courses has students installing, than give them the 
64-bit version and (maybe) enhance their problem-solving skills. It's 
experience they will need, work or not.

Might be worth browsing the fedora-test archives.




-- 

Cheers
John

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