Fedora 9 32 or 64 Bit - Which One?

[Jerry Feldman]

On 10/29/2008 07:50 PM, Bill Davidsen wrote:
>
> I think I see the reason this 32 vs 64 doesn't get resolved, the 
> people who say "what hassles" or "it just works" are all either 
> genuine experts such as you, people who do system administration "as a 
> job" rather than "so they can do their job," and a few people who 
> present themselves as experts and expect others to take opinion as 
> gospel, actual expertise unknown. Based on notes about having to hand 
> install both 32 bit and 64 bit versions of libraries and a few other 
> minor diddles, which are not worth noticing to the experts, but 
> confusing and worrisome for the users who are either just running 
> applications or developing desktop applications.
>
> I think those of us using a mix of 32 bit and 64 bit CPUs would have 
> to see an easily measured performance gain to go 64 bit on the 
> machines which can do so, because the hassle factor of supporting 
> multiple versions of the rest of the system is measurable.
>
> I think the answer is that many more people are running 32 bit 
> systems, and unless you have some need to run very large applications, 
> or a large server, or large memory, you will be using more widely 
> tested compilations of the software, and will have a larger group of 
> experienced users to answer questions. That's the best reason to stay 
> 32 bit now, lacking a benefit from 64 bit.
>
The reason for some of the hassles is that some developers are just too 
lazy to fix their applications, or that some 32-bit applications are 
very poorly written, It's just that simple. From a developer standpoint, 
developing a portable application, eg. one that can be compiled for 
32-bit or 64-bit and work out of the box is relatively simple if you 
follow some rules. The newer C and C++ language standards also have 
specific 32-bit and 64-bit integers, so you don't have to use "long" 
which can be 32-bits or 64-bits. I remember the same issue with 16-bit 
and 32-bit. In the past, I worked on a reasonably complex application 
that had to work on Linux (debian 32-bit, Solaris x86 32-bit, and 
Solaris SPARC. And, my development system at home was a Digital Alpha 
running Linux 64-bit. The only problem we had was that the data base 
code used an algorithm where pointers would be stored with the keys, and 
could be on a non-natural boundary causing an exception on the SPARC. 
There were zero 32-bit to 64-bit issues. I've seen other code that it 
will take several man-years to get it to run properly on 64-bits.

The bottom line is that nearly every new laptop and desktop system being 
produced today uses 64-bit hardware, and Vista is very memory hungry to 
where you probably won't be able to get a 32-bit Windows platform.
<note - I am bias toward 64-bits since I have been working in 64-bit 
land since at least 1994, and with 64-bit Linux roughly in the same time 
frame. I forget exactly when Linus actually had a 64-bit kernel for the 
Alpha, but it was 94 or 95.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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