What should I know about Debian x86-64?

[cleverhandle]

It's time for an all-new rig (first one since 2002 IIRC) and, obviously, it's going to have x86-64 capabilities. From what I can see, to install Debian on this I'll want to grab a netinst from http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64 to get started. But last I remember hearing there were a few apps, plugins, etc. that were a bit tricky to get working (because Debian is "pure" 64-bit, IIRC?). Could someone familiar with Debian-amd64 tell me what I should be expecting?

 

[silverpig]

Well I don't know debian, but I know flash and win32codecs (cause there are no win64codecs) won't work in a pure 64-bit environment. So no flash, no .wmv or .asf files.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: silverpig
Well I don't know debian, but I know flash and win32codecs (cause there are no win64codecs) won't work in a pure 64-bit environment. So no flash, no .wmv or .asf files.

Yeah, I saw something about that in a wiki. Looks like the workaround is to install a chroot'ed 32-bit system and then play some tricks with symlinks and bind mounts to make everything work together. Sounds like it should work, on paper at least.

 

[silverpig]

With gentoo it's a bit simpler... You can do the chroot and symlinks if you like, but the other option is to just install 32-bit compatible binaries. Firefox-bin and gmplayer-bin show flash and play .wmv files fine for me.

 

[Nothinman]

Personally I would just install the i386 port and run a 64-bit kernel, there's pretty much nothing to be gained from 64-bit userland right now. If you want, you could setup a 64-bit chroot for anything that might benefit from it.

 

[cleverhandle]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
Personally I would just install the i386 port and run a 64-bit kernel, there's pretty much nothing to be gained from 64-bit userland right now. If you want, you could setup a 64-bit chroot for anything that might benefit from it.

True, true. I was just thinking that if the new install lasts as long as the old one did (just about 3 years) then things should be pretty thoroughly 64-bit well before this install's end of life. If I did go 64-bit kernel w/32-bit userland, what's the install procedure? I remember reading somewhere that the 64-bit kernel is included in the regular Sarge CD along with the core GCC libraries. So would I basically just do a regular Sarge install and the installer would auto-detect the CPU type? Or I choose a custom kernel somewhere along the line?

 

[Nothinman]

That's a good question. =) I don't see any linux-image packages for AMD64 in sid, but I'm not sure if the AMD64 port has been pushed onto the mirrors yet. If not, you might be able to add the AMD64 apt repository just for the kernel, building your own would probably be a decent amount of work since you would need a 64-bit compiler.