[plug] AMD64 distros

[Michael]

On Sun, 22 Aug 2004, James Devenish wrote:

> 
> In message <1093152875.2773.4.camel at localhost>
> on Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 01:34:35PM +0800, Chris Caston wrote:
> > It seems like its one of these technologies which is on the horizon but
> > not quite there.
> 
> Nevertheless, I suggest that you stockpile some 64-bit systems before
> the year 2037 ;-) [UNIX 'joke', analogous to the Year 2000 Problem.]
> 
> In message <Pine.LNX.4.50.0408221326490.8112-100000 at natalie>
> on Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 02:05:19PM +0800, Michael wrote:
> > On Sun, 22 Aug 2004, Chris Caston wrote:
> > > I assume you can still run win32 apps on 64-bit XP so it should be
> > > important to be able to run existing packages on 64 bit Linux.
> > 
> > I don't know about debian packages but the distros I've tried have had 
> > most applications ported. Still, even with Windows, you will run into 
> > library hell if trying to use 32 and 64 bit applications. Mandrake and 
> > Suse both work around this by separating 64 and 32 bit libraries.
> 
> <frown> You seem to associate "library hell" with "work around this
> by separating 64-bit libraries from 32-bit libraries". What is the
> connection? I agree that "library hell" exists, because all of an app's

So whats the problem? :D


> dependencies need to be available in the same format as the app itself,
> leading to all the "duplication" of libraries.
> 

Its a pain in many circumstances. For example, if you have a fresh 
gentoo64 system installed, to compile and install say 32 bit mplayer (so 
you can use 32 bit dll codecs etc) then you will need to install every 
required 32 bit library. This is a pain for distributions like Gentoo that 
don't manage 32 bit packages easily. 

IMHO, Mandrake64 will make this much easier than Windows64 ;)


Regards
Michael Collard


> 
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