[bulug] Re: 64 or 32 bit Linux
- From: Ryan Mullen <rmullen@xxxxxx>
- To: bulug-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 13:27:29 -0500 (EST)
Hello,
On Mon, 3 Nov 2008, Benjamin Carr wrote:
I just got a board with an Intel Duo Quad-core processor. I understand the
processor can run 62- as well as 32-bit programs. What Linux distribution
should I install on it? Is the 64-bit distribution (which is labeled AMD)
appropriate only for AMD processors? If so, are the programs in the 32-bit
distribution 32-bit ones, and how do I write and run 64-bit programs? (Or do I
bother?)
The 'amd64' nomenclature actually refers to the x86_64 archicture which
includes AMD's originally-specified amd64 as well as Intel's EM64T.
Distros labeled amd64 will run just fine on your Intel 64-bit CPU.
I do not consider myself knowledgable enough about the implications that a
64-bit arch has on programming aside from lengthened data types. I'll let
a CS student field that question. Ideally, code should be written such
that it is portable between 32- and 64-bit platforms [0], though for some
scientific or mathematic applications it's somewhat common to see pure
64-bit code. Very high level languages probably won't even require you to
be aware of what platform you're programming on because the interpreter
will handle that for you.
The AMD-64 distribution is what you want if you want to run 64-bit on your
Core2-Quad. A lot of distributions are in the process of renaming their
releases from AMD to x86_64. I have been running Gentoo AMD64 for about 4
years, without trouble, that includes using 32bit Matlab. The one downside
I know of is with flash (someone correct me if this has changed) and other
32bit broweser plugins. You will either need to run 32bit Firefox or run
nspluginwrapper, which is a 64bit stub that lets you use 32bit plugins.
I too have been running amd64 Gentoo, but for about a year and a half.
There have been no problems. Code is sometimes slower to be packaged and
released through the package management system, but it hasn't gotten in
the way of anything I've tried to do. As Ben said, the proprietary Adobe
Flash is available only as binary blobs and do not include 64-bit support.
Because the default amd64 Gentoo is configured as "multilib" it is able to
take advantage of the fact that x86_64 CPUs are able to run standard
32-bit x86 code - with multilib enabled, 32-bit code can be run as long as
all the shared libraries it needs is available as 32-bit objects [1].
There are open source Flash alternatives like Gnash, but they are still in
an immature state and unfortunately are not ready to replace Adobe's blobs
just yet.
64-bit support on Linux has been a success. Microsoft has done and is
still doing a good amount of catching up.
[0]:
http://raymondtay.blogspot.com/2008/09/rules-for-writing-64-bit-clean-code.html
[1]: http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/gentoo-amd64-faq.xml#multilib
Ryan
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