An It-slave in the digital saltmine

I have a modern laptop with 4Gb memory so in theory I should gain from running 64 bit Linux.

I installed Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop x86_64 and had som problems with:

• Java based webpages
• Flash

I spend several hours with google and tested several versions av java and flash plugins. I managed to get flash running but it was incredible unstable and java never worked. Both were installed as 32 bit applications.

I reinstalled and used Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop i386 instead and went to a flash page and installed acrobat flash player plugin from the suggestions that poped up and the same with java. It worked perfectly well.

We run WebEx as a conference application at op5 and they say that any day they will have a Linux 32 bit client, so that is another reason to use 32 bit Linux. Otherwise I have to install a virtual windows just for one application.

This really show why interoperability is important and why open standards should be used. As far as I understand Java is GPLd these days so why a 64 bit version does not exist is something I do not understand or if it exist why did it install a 32 bit version? Why does not Acrobat release their flashplayer as opensource?

Well, now I’m stucked with using only 3.6 Gb of memory but the application works.

3 Responses to “64 bit vs 32 bit”

1. Lars Says:
   January 21st, 2009 at 2:22 pm

   Actually, both Flash and Java are available in 64-bit versions now. Flash is in alpha and Java is in beta, but they are both stable on my system.

   http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/
   https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html

2. claes Says:
   January 22nd, 2009 at 6:11 pm

   Java 6 Update 12 should include 64 bit applet support – would be good if you tried it. I have not tried it but run 32 bit exactly because of this. I will upgrade to OpenSuse 11.1 64 bit version if I can get Java, Flash, Wine and media players to work with 64 bit.

   https://jdk6.dev.java.net/6uNea.html

3. peter Says:
   January 23rd, 2009 at 11:49 am

   I do not have the time to fiddle with this. Right now I must get my MythTV system up and running.
   Thanks for your input.

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