64-bit annoyance

[ssurgul]

Well, I just finished installing Ubuntu 8.10-AMD64 on my workstation as a second boot option. Now I'm discovering, much to my chagrin, that if software is packaged (.deb, .rpm, etc.) in i386 mode, it won't work with the AMD64 code. And I'm too impatient to wait for the rest of the software industry to move to 64-bit architecture, and too lazy to try and recompile source code for it myself. So, reinstall time! Thank goodness I've only gotten a few programs installed, and not moved ahead with a big transition yet.

Comments

[andrew7782.livejournal.com]

One thing I found strange is that on Gentoo, more packages are marked stable on x64 than they are on x32.

[ssurgul.livejournal.com]

I keep hoping. But for things like the Yahoo Messenger, and some other things I'd want to be working correctly on a transferral system, they only package them up as i386.

I have been pondering Gentoo, eventually, as well. When I'm not in classes any longer, and can start really getting acquainted with Linux at the compile-and-install-everything level. Ubuntu is GREAT that it allows GUI-centric folk like me a chance to get down and dirty with Linux. But it's not so great that the kernel is all compiled to be 'generic' rather than optimized, which cascades down to all the prebuilt packages as well.

[athelstan.livejournal.com]

Linux is fantastic... but I've always left windows hanging around. The big, bug problem you hit right on the head... commercial applications that simply do not exist on linux. AIM, YM, and games. Games was the big one. I bought quake 3 and Alpha Centari for linux. That market failed. So now linux is something I have yet to really use linux at home any more.. no good reason. I did find that compiling programs was the way to go.

I do find that Vista 64-bit works well. It's the monopoly working to help... for once.

[ssurgul.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but there is another option. I just didn't want to utilize it with the realization that a good deal of the native ports I was wanting to use were being encoded with the i386 architecture, not the 64-bit. Seems Sun has free-released their Virtual Box tool, which will actually run XP as a virtual machine in a Linux environment. VERY handy, and a short-cut, cheeseball means of circumventing the lameness that is Windows. :)

WINE works better than people think these days.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Don't need Cedega or Transgaming or any of the 'commercial' WINE packages these days, the vast majority of software Just Works, thanks in large part actually to Vista force-feeding companies to revise their code.

Most versions of Microsoft Office? Works out of the box.

Steam games like TF2? Out of the box, works.

World of Warcraft? Out of the box, again.

Some of the bleeding-edge video-driver options like pixel shaders don't always get enabled, so you can't run DX10-only stuff and some DX9-only stuff bitches, but it's a LOT more capable than it's reputation. Vista force-feeding 'fix your code to work under Vista!' ended up making WINE work a lot better, amusingly. =^.^=

And as I mentioned in my other post, 32-bit CHRoot in AMD64 is amazingly functional and useful. =^.^=

This is there Gentoo is still the King.

[wolfwings.livejournal.com]

Anything outside of the i386 world these days, if Gentoo supports it it's a LOT easier to get software installed for it I've found, just because it's based around the idea of compiling from source. Most packages are available as binary installs though for all platforms they work on these days though so you don't need to compile, but that it's built around that idea makes it a lot easier to support more exotic platforms.

And, oddly, i386 packages install juts fine if you go through the one-time trouble of setting up a 32-bit CHRoot (akin to the WOW64 environment 64-bit Windows platforms use) and just have i386 stuff get installed there.