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.
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
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
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.