I've been considering trying out a 64bit distro but i wanted to
inquire about application availability. I have heard all sorts of
complaints about 64bit windows and application incompatability but i
get the feeling that might be comparing apples to oranges. Generally
speaking what is the availability of 64bit apps (especially ones
optimized for 64b) like on linux in general? Any thoughts of
suggestions etc would really be appreciated!

Cheers

-Gaiko

Most of the applications now compile to 64 bit.

What optimizations you are expecting I am not sure. Most 64 bit apps run
slower and use more memory from what I can gather.

I can say from my own experience that I saw no real speed increase
anyway. Having said that I suspect there may be some optimizations in
things that use fixed point arithmetic - stuff like video rendering etc
- where the ability to handle larger natural word sizes is a bonus.

--
It's simply unbelievable how much energy and creativity people have
invested into creating contradictory, bogus and stupid licenses...
                -- - Sven Rudolph about licences in debian/non-free.

I run 64 bit Ubuntu on a couple of systems and the only thing that
is noticeably faster as far as I can tell is transcoding of video
from one format to another.  As Hadron says, most apps are available
on 64 bit Linux, and you can usually run the 32 bit version with a
bit of hassle when it isn't.  The biggest pain I've run into is
having to run the 32 bit Swiftfox so the flash plug-in will work
when browsing the web.  If you are using your Linux box for normal
desktop productivity stuff, there is probably not much to be gained
by going 64 bit.  If, however, you really are doing some serious
number crunching, the minor ease of use sacrifice might be worth
it.

Later,

Thad
--
Yeah, I drank the Open Source cool-aid... Unlike the other brand, it had
all the ingredients on the label.

* gaikokujinkyofu...@gmail.com peremptorily fired off this memo:

Just some starters.

The vast majority of packages out there  in Debian repositories work as
64-bit applications.

You need nspluginwrapper for those proprietary Firefox/Netscape plugins
written by parochail commercial outfits.

There may be a need to build a 32-bit chroot environment, but I haven't
encountered that need for the apps I use.

Some apps may be a revision or two behind in the repositories.  The only
example I know of right now is OpenOffice (2.3 versus 2.4).

Nvidia drivers seem to work well.  I'm running dual monitors/Xinerama.

You probably want to up your RAM a bit, especially if you want to run
VMware.

Subscribe to the 64-ibt-related mailing lists for the distro you choose.

Overall, I'm happy with 64-bit Linux.  Building and burning ISO CDs
screams on this bargain-basement dual-core system.

That's on amd64, 4 Gb of RAM.

It's my primary home/server system right now.

--
Microsoft has had clear competitors in the past. It's a good thing we have
museums to document that.
   -- Bill Gates, Speech at the Computer History Museum, as quoted in InfoWorld
      magazine (October 2001)

WRT Fedora at least, there's zero difference AFAICT. 64 bit packages
have complete parity with their 32 bit counterparts, with the important
difference that they are faster and more responsive overall. You'll need
4GB of memory or more to really benefit the most from 64 bit, however
don't let that hold you back. It certainly is a completely different
experience from Windows 64 bit, which is essentially little more than a
dysfunctional gimmick.

Be aware that few proprietary applications are available in 64 bit ...
on /any/ platform (with the possible exception of the Mac), however
there are ways around that:

. Java plugin ... use Icedtea/gcj instead
. Flash plugin ... use Gnash instead, or mspluginwrapper

If you choose to run Wine, bear in mind that it's 32 bit only, since
there's little point in emulation for virtually non-existent 64 bit
Windows applications.

You don't need to install a 64 bit "pure" system, but can have a mixture
of both 64 and 32 bit, nicely handled by package management, so you
don't need to worry about mixed dependencies.

A few commercial games have 64 bit versions for Linux, notably ID
Software titles. Running Q3 Arena 64 bit is quite a revelation.

--
K.
http://slated.org

.----
| 'When it comes to knowledge, "ownership" just doesn't make sense'
|     ~ Cory Doctorow, The Guardian.  http://tinyurl.com/22bgx8
`----

Fedora release 8 (Werewolf) on sky, running kernel 2.6.23.8-63.fc8
 01:08:53 up 101 days, 21:44,  5 users,  load average: 0.06, 0.10, 0.05

news:fc113e1e-14ff-4756-8bf1-92d397ee5ff4@e6g2000prf.googlegroups.com...

It'll use lots of memory and likely run slower. Unless you're running a huge
DB with terabytes of data or doing video transcoding all day-and-night then
avoid the headaches and do yourself a favor and use a 32-bit version.

--
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