64-bit - Not recommended for daily desktop usage

[NoOp]

On 06/10/2010 11:25 PM, Knapp wrote:
>> 1. You need to download dual versions of many applications. For example,
>> if I update a version of 32bit xyz I can generally transfer that to my
>> other 32bit machines w/o issue. However, for my 64bit machines, I then
>> need to go out and also download the amd64bit version. Thsi causes a lot
>> of added download overhead.
> 
> OK, but that is not really a 32 bit or 64 bit issues. It is a problem
> of having 2 types of machines. It is also not likely to effect someone
> that does not know anything about 32 vs 64 bit or their existence IE
> you are not a newbie.

Agreed. But the maintainability of both can be pretty high. For example;
I test OpenOffice.org OOo on a regular basis. If I need to test on both
32bit & 64bit I need to download two 140Mb+ .debs:
http://download.openoffice.org/other.html
one for each. I also test & use Mozilla SeaMonkey, Thunderbird, etc.,
and if I wish to test/use 32 & 64bit versions then I need to download
the appropriate for both. Same for the standard flash files from the
Ubuntu repo's from the recent Adobe threads; one of i386 & one for amd64.

My point wasn't to disuade anyone from using 64bit, but to just point
out the issues if you have 32bit machines/partitions and 64bit
machines/patitions. It's double effort to maintain both.

> 
>> 2. You can't always get application 64bit builds, or can't get them at
>> the same time as the i386 builds.
>>  Quite often you'll find that updates from the Ubuntu repositories are
>> available first in i386 & sometimes days later in amd64. The recent
>> example for the flash 10.1 security update is a good example; the update
>> is available for i386, but who knows when it will be available for 64bit?
> 
> That is very interesting. Is it just a matter of priorities with the
> devs? Only having 64 bit, I did not know this.

During the 10.04 build transition I could easily see builds for my 32bit
machine(s) that were released. However I found that 64bit builds
sometimes took nearly 1-2 days later. In one case I had an issue whereby
I couldn't boot into a 64bit partition for over 36 hours as I had to
wait for the 64bit build to finish and be uploaded. Granted, my cases
are probably a little out of the norm as I test from alpha stages to
final release. But again, it does indeed happen. I can't say as I blame
any dev for doing i386 builds first as those are the most populous, so
it makes perfect sense to do them first.

> 
>> 3. You can't get amd64 builds/packages. Other times you simply can't get
>> a 64bit build for a package/application at all. This means that you need
>> to resort to a 32bit build & hope that it works. Sometimes it does,
>> sometimes it doesn't.
> 
> I run all sorts of software. I have never had this problem in the last
> 2 years; before that yes. Do you really still have this problem with
> Linux? What software?

Yes. Mostly with software outside the Ubuntu repositories.