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64-bit Linux questions

C

corinthos

Golden Member
Right now I am using a 32-bit CPU, but may upgrade to an X2 64-bit CPU very soon.
I'm looking to install Debian and was wondering the following:

1. are there any problems finding 64-bit drivers for everything (ready to go from various sources), and if there are some problems, is it simply a matter of compiling from source yourself to get the drivers you need?

2. if you install the i386 32-bit version of Debian and later upgrade to a 64-bit cpu, is there
an easy way to convert a pre-existing 32-bit install to the 64-bit version? Or is this going to require a fresh install when upgrading CPUs?

Thanks in advance!

 
Originally posted by: corinthos
Right now I am using a 32-bit CPU, but may upgrade to an X2 64-bit CPU very soon.
I'm looking to install Debian and was wondering the following:

1. are there any problems finding 64-bit drivers for everything (ready to go from various sources), and if there are some problems, is it simply a matter of compiling from source yourself to get the drivers you need?
Click to expand...

It's the same for 32bit and 64bit. The vast majority of the drivers are aviable directly out of the Linux kernel itself. Any driver that you would have to compile to run on 32bit Linux will need to be done on 64bit Linux.

Propriatory drivers are a bit different, but as long as you avoid that as much as possible you should be fine. The major sore points in driver support will be ATI support and then the other would be if you depend on NDISwrapper support to get your wifi running. But if you don't require either then you should be fine. Wifi problems are a lot less of a big deal with Linux today then even just a year ago. Better OSS driver support and such things.

64bit Linux hardware support is superior to something like Windows 64bit... Linux has had native 64bit versions aviable for probably a bit over ten years now. Linux supports 64bit alpha, 64bit sparc, 64bit POWER, and 64bit Itanium proccessors, and 64bit AMD/Intel PC... So older hardware is supported very well also.

Application support is good if you avoid propriatory applications. There is no 64bit version of Flash for example. Also some codecs support is missing because it came from 32bit windows codecs hacked to run on Linux, which doesn't realy work natively on 64bit Linux.

But as far as Free software goes it's all there (as in 98%) and has been for a while now.

For 32bit software support you have to install 32bit versions of library files and other dependancies to run those 32bit applications. IT works and is fast, but it's a extra hoop you have to jump through.

2. if you install the i386 32-bit version of Debian and later upgrade to a 64-bit cpu, is there
an easy way to convert a pre-existing 32-bit install to the 64-bit version? Or is this going to require a fresh install when upgrading CPUs?
Click to expand...

The easiest way would be to setup a seperate /home partition for your user files.

That way when you want to go 64bit you can just reformat your root partition, install the new OS and be sure to mount /home to it.

All your user preferences are stored in your home directory in the form of .files or .directories names. Your bookmarks, your high scores, etc etc etc.

By having a seperate /home directory all that stuff is easily preserved between Linux versions. There are no compatability issues that I know of moving between 64bit and 32bit Linux and keeping the same preferences and such.

Right now, unless your running over 3-4gigs of RAM there realy isn't much advantage to running 64bit Linux on the desktop. You'll actually end up using more RAM on a 64bit OS then a 32bit OS. Once you get over 4gigs then it's time to switch to 64bit.


edit:

The major problem you may face with a reinstall and keeping the same /home directory is permissions mismatch. That can be fixed with a

chown -R username:groupname /home/username
(the default groupname is usually the same as the username, so for me it would be like):
chown -R drag😀rag /home/drag

Pretty simple once your a little bit familar with the command line.
 
1. are there any problems finding 64-bit drivers for everything (ready to go from various sources), and if there are some problems, is it simply a matter of compiling from source yourself to get the drivers you need?
Click to expand...

Since 99% of the drivers you need are part of the kernel they'll work fine. AFAIK nVidia and ATI both provide 64-bit drivers too so they shouldn't be an issue. Anything else is questionable and ndiswrapper won't work at all unless you have 64-bit Windows drivers to use with it so I wouldn't even consider it.

2. if you install the i386 32-bit version of Debian and later upgrade to a 64-bit cpu, is there
an easy way to convert a pre-existing 32-bit install to the 64-bit version? Or is this going to require a fresh install when upgrading CPUs?
Click to expand...

Fresh install is the only way to convert everything but it's not really worth it. You can install a 64-bit kernel on that 32-bit installation which will give you the ability to run 64-bit binaries so that you need to run something with a huge VM space if necessary.
 
thanks for your replies..

specifically regarding Flash, I do want to be able to use it.. maybe I can use the 32-bit support in the 64-bit OS and that will allow me to run Flash somehow?

also, I'm pretty sure I'll go with NVidia linux drivers..

lastly, I am using RT2500 wireless lan.

Sounds like that last issue might be my biggest problem when going 64-bit.
I might have to just stick with 32-bit for now.

Thanks
 
specifically regarding Flash, I do want to be able to use it.. maybe I can use the 32-bit support in the 64-bit OS and that will allow me to run Flash somehow?
Click to expand...

There are multiple ways to run 32-bit processes on a 64-bit system, but as I said the simplest thing to id just install a 64-bit kernel on your 32-bit system. The problem is that a 64-bit binary can't load a 32-bit one so you need a 32-bit browser to use flash. The primary way to do this is with a 32-bit chroot, essentially you install your 64-bit system and then pick a directory somewhere and install another 32-bit copy there so you can run 32-bit binaries from there when necessary. Obviously that wastes a decent amount of space and is mildly inconvenient to use but it provides the best compatibility. I do know of a package called nspluginwrapper that I believe lets you run the 32-bit plugin inside of a 64-bit browser but I have no idea how stable it is.

Sounds like that last issue might be my biggest problem when going 64-bit.
Click to expand...

But why are you even trying to go 64-bit? The benefits are pretty small right now and depending on what you want to do the problems can be pretty ugly. I'm currently using a 64-bit system and the only real issue I've had is with flash so I do have a 32-bit chroot setup that I use once in a great while, but I've also been using Linux for over 10 years now so when something goes wrong it's not a big deal for me to fix it but for someone less experienced it could be a huge PITA.
 
For Rt2500 wireless consult these folks:
http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

I setup a Rt61 device for my brother to use. It gets very good reception...
If you have problems with what debian or Ubuntu provide by default then you'd probably want to use their 'nightly snapshot' drivers. Of course your experiances may vary as this is development quality code. But they have forums specificly for this card and it should work.

For my personal experiance the drivers provided by Ubuntu and Debian by default (I think that with Debian you may still have to compile them, but with Ubuntu it should support your card by default) works pretty good for the rt2500 stuff.

Then also check out the RunilT utility. You have to compile it, but it's something that is specificly designed for these cards and should work out OK.


To get your system ready to compile kernel modules in Debian or Ubuntu (with Debian become root, with Ubuntu use 'sudo') you can go:
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
# that will get you to the latest versions of anything.
# if there is a kernel update then reboot to use the newest kernel
apt-get install module-assistant
m-a update
m-a prepare
m-a a-i rt2500

And that should be that. I think Ubuntu will provide that driver by default now so those steps are probably unnessicary. If it doesn't work then uninstall that rt2500 package you just made with the module-assistant command and try their cvs code.

For the RunilT utility..

For the dependancies needed to compile it I just guessed and did:
apt-get build-dep gnome-terminal

and that seemed to get everything.

Then it needed g++-3.3 for whatever reason. So I installed that...
apt-get install g++-3.3

Then follow the installation instructions provided in the INSTALL file in the RunilT tarball. After the install it makes a menu entry in your gnome menu, which you can then just use.

Provides a nice list of aviable AP points it finds and you can select which one you want and connect to it.

You may want to uninstall network-manager as that may get in the way.
apt-get remove --purge network-manager
 
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