Why do newbies go for 64 bits?
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From: Tony Houghton on 21 Nov 2009 20:13 In <hea119$53v$2(a)localhost.localdomain>, Martin Gregorie <martin(a)address-in-sig.invalid> wrote: > On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:23:09 +0000, Folderol wrote: > >> Try using hydrogen + zynaddsubfx + jamin + rosegarden with qjackctl - >> you'll notice the difference then alright :o >> > I know next to nothing about music programs. I can rip vinyl onto CD with > Audacity, but that's about it, so why do you say that? I mean, how many > of these programs' memory requirements bust the 32 bit addressing limit. > IOW does running a 64 bit OS buy you anything with that process mix that > a few more cores and the odd extra GB of RAM wouldn't also solve? But what's the disadvantage of using 64-bit Linux nowadays? 32-bit WINE works for me on Debian amd64. Certain browser plugins used to be problematic, but there are decent (well, not really any worse than the 32-bit versions) 64-bit versions now. -- TH * http://www.realh.co.uk
From: Geoff Clements on 22 Nov 2009 05:30 Folderol wrote: > Try using hydrogen + zynaddsubfx + jamin + rosegarden with qjackctl - bless you ... -- Geoff
From: Folderol on 22 Nov 2009 12:36 On Sun, 22 Nov 2009 00:35:53 +0000 (UTC) Martin Gregorie <martin(a)address-in-sig.invalid> wrote: > On Sat, 21 Nov 2009 23:23:09 +0000, Folderol wrote: > > > Try using hydrogen + zynaddsubfx + jamin + rosegarden with qjackctl - > > you'll notice the difference then alright :o > > > I know next to nothing about music programs. I can rip vinyl onto CD with > Audacity, but that's about it, so why do you say that? I mean, how many > of these programs' memory requirements bust the 32 bit addressing limit. > IOW does running a 64 bit OS buy you anything with that process mix that > a few more cores and the odd extra GB of RAM wouldn't also solve? Zyn. in particular will use as much memory as you can creatively design patches for! However it is also a serious number-cruncher, and with the exception of PadSynth, it does all it's calculations in real time. With a machine in 32bit mode it is definitely more likely to fall over itself than when the same machine has a 64bit OS version. Currently I use a dual core athlon with 4G OCZ memory -- Will J G
From: Dave Farrance on 23 Nov 2009 04:03 Martin Gregorie <martin(a)address-in-sig.invalid> wrote: >I notice, over on the WINE users list, that a lot of newbies go straight >for the 64 bit version of Ubuntu and stick with it despite the fact that >WINE-64 doesn't work yet and installing the 32 bit libraries to run 32 >bit WINE is hassle that could be avoided by running a 32 bit Ubuntu. 64 >is a bigger number than 32, so is this simply a lemming-like bigger is >better knee-jerk? Dunno. I installed Mandriva 2010.0 x86_64 rather than i586 because I assumed that some optimizations might have an effect. Wine installed straight from Mandriva's GUI package manager and I'm running Agent on it right now. $ urpmq wine -i | grep -i architecture Size : 1259804 Architecture: i586 So wine isn't 64 bit code here, but it seems that Mandriva transparently took care of the dependencies for me. I've also downloaded and installed the 32-bit Adobe flashplayer and PDF reader rpms and they both installed with no complaints about dependencies and both work fine. So I've noticed no actual downside to this particular x86_64 distro so far. I believe that gcc can utilize the extra general-purpose registers in 64-bit processors if the x86_64 optimizations are selected. I don't know if this does much in practice for apps used by the average home user. I'm tempted to install the i586 version of this distro in a separate partition to do some timing tests. -- Dave Farrance
From: Paul Rudin on 23 Nov 2009 04:11
Martin Gregorie <martin(a)address-in-sig.invalid> writes: > I notice, over on the WINE users list, that a lot of newbies go straight > for the 64 bit version of Ubuntu and stick with it despite the fact that > WINE-64 doesn't work yet and installing the 32 bit libraries to run 32 > bit WINE is hassle that could be avoided by running a 32 bit Ubuntu. 64 > is a bigger number than 32, so is this simply a lemming-like bigger is > better knee-jerk? > > Is there any good reason for running a 64 environment if the box is just > running OpenOffice/email/Firefox, playing games under WINE and maybe > listening to music or watching DVDs? > > Do the likes of Audacity or video editors ever want enough RAM to run > better in a 64 bit environment? I can't think of anything else that a > home user might want to run that might processes occupying more than > 500MB RAM. This is all rather from the perspective of people wanting to run wine, which I wouldn't imagine is high on the list of priorities for most people. In general the reason to use 64 bit over 32 is that you'll get better performance. |