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 14:22
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 18:11
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
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.