AMD Athlon64 Systems

[Michal Jaegermann]

On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 10:22:56AM -0500, Thomas Dodd wrote:
> 
> Does a 64bit mozilla even make sense right now?

What do you mean?  Mozilla recompiled for 64-bits on Alpha is a
reality for a very long time.  There is no other one.  There is an
issue, of course, with binary only plugins which you could
possibly would want to use but would be the case regardless if
Alpha binaries would be 64 or 32 bits.  This is different on
x86_64 though but it has really nothing to do with 32/64
differences.

> FWIW, I work with 64bit Solaris8, but most apps are still 32bit. 

SPARC is somewhat different story.  32-bit user space is faster
there due to architectural issues.  This is not the case for every
64-bit processor.

> Mozilla, OpenOffice.org for sure.

At least not so long time ago, and probably still, this was
available (the first directory contains a big pile of 64-bit
binaries for Linux/Alpha):
ftp://gatworks.com/OpenOffice1.0.2/01.norm/
ftp://gatworks.com/OpenOffice1.0.2/DigitalAlphaPatches/LX164.OpenOffice.Patches.3.tar.bz2

This shows at least that cleaning up 32-bit bugs even from OpenOffice
is doable.  If these patches are good enough to recompile that
monster on SPARC I have no idea but bulk of work is likely already
done.

> I would like to see a 64bit GIMP though...

Hm, let us see.  Like that?

ftp://ftp2.compaq.com/pub/linux/RedHat/7.2-alpha/updates/rpms/alpha/
  8844992 Apr 11  2003 gimp-1.2.1-7.1hp.alpha.rpm
   301056 Apr 11  2003 gimp-devel-1.2.1-7.1hp.alpha.rpm
   364562 Apr 11  2003 gimp-perl-1.2.1-7.1hp.alpha.rpm

and sources are in the next directory.  http://rpmfind.net/
quickly finds various other 64-bit GIMP binaries.  In times when
Red Hat still had in its offer distributions for Alpha gimp was
present at least from RH 5.1 on.  Maybe earlier? It appears that
GIMP is simply written correctly so it should be enough just to
recompile.

  Michal