64 bit apps


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I haven't used Linux in quite a while now, but I am looking to get away from windows again. I am just wondering if there is enough 64 bit support out there to make it feasible for everday now, or if flash still doesn't work and other crap like that.

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Flash 64bit (native) exist since yesterday, but mandriva team wrote a quick fix 1 years and a half ago to make the 32 version work in 64bit browser.

It exists as an alpha release, not a final release or even a release candidate... I'm installing it right now, but I'm a bit wary!

Edit: It seems to work OK. No crashes so far.

Edited by rpgfan
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It exists as an alpha release, not a final release or even a release candidate... I'm installing it right now, but I'm a bit wary!

Edit: It seems to work OK. No crashes so far.

Works absolutely perfectly...well,has done for the past 36 hours or so!

Wondering though how to install an x64 version of Firefox on Ubuntu. Odd that there's a Windows x64 version of Firefox, but no x64 Flash support. Yet for Linux there is x64 Flash player, but no obvious x64 browser?!

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Just about everything open source has a 64-bit version. Keep in mind - open source. Some things might not work, like drivers or proprietary things, but there's only a handful of applications that haven't made the switch.

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It is not really a "switch", we talk about bugs here. You can take the source and compile them for everything gcc support, but sometime, dirty hack are used and brake with different situations. x86_64 is x86 after all, it is the same meta arch. Things should not break that much, but in fact, they do.

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Many applications that require fast execution use assembly programming to speed up the execution. Whether it is inline assembly or an ASM source file, some instructions won't work on x86-64. On x86, for example, the instructions "pushaw" and "pushad" instruction push all of the registers onto the stack. However, those can't be used in 64-bit long mode! When compiling a 32-bit application, those instructions compile fine, but they simply do not exist in long mode. For this reason, compiler/assembler errors will occur. This is one reason why many programs haven't been ported yet. However, many important libraries like GMP and MPFR (math-related) have been ported already, so it is just a matter of time. If the author of a program has no intention of porting to x86-64, it is practically inevitable that someone create a program that does the same thing (different UI, of course), but it will work for both x86 and x86-64.

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pretty much everything should work with ubuntu x64. i will be installing this build myself this week after my new ram gets here. i do know there is a method for converting 32bit debs to x64, ill have to find the guide.

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You can't "convert" them, all it will do is installing them in a special 32bit folder with some 32bit libs, duplicating your system native libs.

actually yes you can convert them, ive done it before. has to be done command line though.

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actually yes you can convert them, ive done it before. has to be done command line though.

I wish I could find something on Google about this. I know there are Mozilla plugin wrappers for 64-bit systems where only 32-bit plugins exist (Adobe Flash Player, for example), but I didn't know there was a utility to convert 32-bit packages containing binaries that actually made the binaries 64-bit...

Care to enlighten us when you can? This would be quite useful!

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Just about everything open source has a 64-bit version. Keep in mind - open source. Some things might not work, like drivers or proprietary things, but there's only a handful of applications that haven't made the switch.

the open source world has done a much better job at moving to 64bit than it's closed source counterpart

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the open source world has done a much better job at moving to 64bit than it's closed source counterpart

That's because MS had to fix its programming APIs to allow for both 32-bit and 64-bit compilers. For example, take the DWORD type in the Windows API. If you're targeting a 32-bit machine, it maps to DWORD32. If you're targeting a 64-bit machine, it maps to DWORD64. Originally, it just mapped to the built-in `long' type IIRC. Unfortunately, that is a 32-bit integral type in 64-bit Windows, unlike 64-bit Linux where `long' is a 64-bit integral type. In other words, the 64-bit path for Linux apps was relatively simple compared to the same path for Windows apps. After all, any code that used `long' for a 32-bit integer on a 32-bit platform simply got changed to a 64-bit integer on a 64-bit platform! Isn't Linux great? ^_^

/me <3 Linux.

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