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Have just put together a new boxen which is built upon a Sempron and an Asus
K8N-UAYVZ ... in about a fortnight I plan to do a new install for 64bit
since there's no direct upgrade path as yet. After following some threads
here, such as Mark Baker's "Gentoo Installation", it occurs to me that
there are some pitfalls others of you here who have survived after making
the jump which I could benefit by, as well as any Google searches by others
to come. So, what I'm requesting now is that you who have switched tell me
what to do or avoid - if you're a mind to - as it pertains to KDE/Gnome,
Openoffice, and anything else you'd like to share.
--
BlackTopBum
You don't skateboard?
What worthwhile thing are you doing !?

On Sunday 21 May 2006 03:28, BlackTopBum stood up and spoke the
following words to the masses in /alt.os.linux.gentoo...:/

> Have just put together a new boxen which is built upon a Sempron and
> an Asus K8N-UAYVZ ... in about a fortnight I plan to do a new install
> for 64bit since there's no direct upgrade path as yet. After following
> some threads here, such as Mark Baker's "Gentoo Installation", it
> occurs to me that there are some pitfalls others of you here who have
> survived after making the jump which I could benefit by, as well as
> any Google searches by others to come. So, what I'm requesting now is
> that you who have switched tell me what to do or avoid - if you're a
> mind to - as it pertains to KDE/Gnome, Openoffice, and anything else
> you'd like to share.

Not that I'm the expert, and I certainly don't even have a 64-bit
machine, but one of the things that regularly keeps popping up in
various newsgroups when it comes to 64-bit GNU/Linux is that things
like Firefox are best chosen as 32-bit versions, even if only because
some proprietary plugins - FlashPlayer, among others - can only work as
such.

I am yet to make the transition to Gentoo myself and so I may not be the
right person to give you advice on this, but the above seems to show up
on a regular basis, which is why I mention it. ;-)

--
With kind regards,

*Aragorn*
(Registered GNU/Linux user # 223157)

BlackTopBum <going.vert@the.wall> writes:
> So, what I'm requesting now is that you who have switched tell me
>what to do or avoid - if you're a mind to - as it pertains to KDE/Gnome,
>Openoffice, and anything else you'd like to share.

I have installed AMD64 Gentoo on my box in February 2005, and don't
have any tips to provide here. It has pretty much worked flawlessly;
the only exception is that after the upgrade to 2005.0 the i386
versions of the X libraries vanished, so some old binaries I have from
my pre-AMD64 days no longer work
<2005Oct16.224608@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at>.

However, I don't run KDE or Openoffice and only few Gnome
applications.

- anton
--
M. Anton Ertl Some things have to be seen to be believed
anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at Most things have to be believed to be seen
http://www.complang.tuwien.ac.at/anton/home.html

BlackTopBum wrote:
> Have just put together a new boxen which is built upon a Sempron and an Asus
> K8N-UAYVZ ... in about a fortnight I plan to do a new install for 64bit
> since there's no direct upgrade path as yet. After following some threads
> here, such as Mark Baker's "Gentoo Installation", it occurs to me that
> there are some pitfalls others of you here who have survived after making
> the jump which I could benefit by, as well as any Google searches by others
> to come. So, what I'm requesting now is that you who have switched tell me
> what to do or avoid - if you're a mind to - as it pertains to KDE/Gnome,
> Openoffice, and anything else you'd like to share.

While I haven't setup Gentoo as 64bit, we're running both 32bit and
64bit systems at work (software dev. business), Gentoo as 32bit only.

It's scientific software, heavy on calculations. Mostly, we find that
there isn't much difference, except for our numerical apps, which can
run for 2-3 days on a 16-node cluster.

Our workstation GUI/OpenGL parts actually works better on 32bit.
So does compiling and 'normal' things, like office apps, watching films
- yes, developers do have a bit o fun, especially while travelling

I'm just thinking, what's you requirement for having a 64bit system?
Personally/privately, I really wanted it, mostly because most of the
industry are heading that way. Now, I wan't it only on a socket AM2, to
running 64bit virtualized setups with Xen. For any other purposes, I'll
stick to 32bit (Slack).

--
Kind regards,
Mogens V.

Aragorn said something like a ...


> [...]
> like Firefox are best chosen as 32-bit versions, even if only because
> some proprietary plugins - FlashPlayer, among others - can only work as
> such.

Since I use FF, that's good advise. Thank you.
--
BlackTopBum
You don't skateboard?
What worthwhile thing are you doing !?

Mogens V. said something like a ...

> I'm just thinking, what's you requirement for having a 64bit system?
> Personally/privately, I really wanted it, mostly because most of the
> industry are heading that way.

Didn't really desire 64bit - I live in a semi-rural region of the U.S.
- Wyoming - therefore, choices are limited; esp. while having to get the
system back up for my darling's eBay business in fast order.

As to uses, other than eBay, it's the regular day-to-day email, web,
newsgroups and video games of home users - nothing "intense" like numbers
crunching. Only serious crunching going on here has to do with pretzels. 8p

Plus, I concur with your opinion that the industry is heading that way.
Recently, I saw in Mal-Mart an eMachine sporting a Sempron ... for
WindersXP of all things. Also, getting back to my post, I'm thinking I
should move the system to 64bit - "just in case" - before some major base
system upgrade bites my rear from having a semi-32/64bit arrangement.
--
BlackTopBum
You don't skateboard?
What worthwhile thing are you doing !?

BlackTopBum wrote:
> Mogens V. said something like a ...
>
>>I'm just thinking, what's you requirement for having a 64bit system?
>>Personally/privately, I really wanted it, mostly because most of the
>>industry are heading that way.
>
> Didn't really desire 64bit - I live in a semi-rural region of the U.S.
> - Wyoming - therefore, choices are limited; esp. while having to get the
> system back up for my darling's eBay business in fast order.
>
> As to uses, other than eBay, it's the regular day-to-day email, web,
> newsgroups and video games of home users - nothing "intense" like numbers
> crunching. Only serious crunching going on here has to do with pretzels. 8p
>
> Plus, I concur with your opinion that the industry is heading that way.
> Recently, I saw in Mal-Mart an eMachine sporting a Sempron ... for
> WindersXP of all things. Also, getting back to my post, I'm thinking I
> should move the system to 64bit - "just in case" - before some major base
> system upgrade bites my rear from having a semi-32/64bit arrangement.

Yeah, but I think I failed a Bit here...
What I really did mean is that unless there's a good need for 64bit, it
may not be worth the while going for it as yet.
And I don't think you're likely to find yourself in a situation where
your 32bit OS/apps won't be supported in an a foreseeable future.

--
Kind regards,
Mogens V.

BlackTopBum wrote:

> Aragorn said something like a ...
>
>
>> [...]
>> like Firefox are best chosen as 32-bit versions, even if only because
>> some proprietary plugins - FlashPlayer, among others - can only work as
>> such.
>
> Since I use FF, that's good advise. Thank you.


I've just build a new machine with Asus A8N32-SLI, amd64x2 4800+, nvidia
7600GT, 4Gb of Ram, 10,000rpm hard disk, liang li box, the best reasonable
hardware I could find.

Gentoo installation went smoothly, except for Grub. I've had two problems :

1- My sata disk was supposed to be seen as hd2,0 and was seen as hd0,0. I
lost a couple of hours.
2- Grub cannot work with more than 2Gb of RAM due to a well known bug, it
seems. I switched to Lilo and no problem. I wonder why Grub is selected as
first choice in the Gentoo doc.

Concerning Firefox, I've got two versions, one compiled and one binary (32
bits). No problem with the plugins.

I've still not managed to have win32codecs and mplayer to read wma. This is
the only problem.

My new machine is incredibly speedy compared to my old Athlon 3200 box.

So anyway, it was like, 23:06 CEST May 27 2006, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
Albert was all like, "Dude,

[..]

> Grub cannot work with more than 2Gb of RAM due to a well known
> bug, it seems.

Phew, I'm glad neither I nor the server was aware of this well-known
bug when I set up the one at work with 4G in it. I just hope noone
tells it so it suddenly stops working now!

Seriously tho, where is this documented? It would probably be prudent
to read up on it for any future installs.

--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana. Perth ---> *
16:46:39 up 55 days, 3:40, 6 users, load average: 2.51, 1.97, 0.94
Linux 2.6.16.1 x86_64 GNU/Linux Registered Linux user #261729

Johan Lindquist wrote:
> So anyway, it was like, 23:06 CEST May 27 2006, you know? Oh, and, yeah,
> Albert was all like, "Dude,
>
> [..]
>
>
>>Grub cannot work with more than 2Gb of RAM due to a well known
>>bug, it seems.
>
>
> Phew, I'm glad neither I nor the server was aware of this well-known
> bug when I set up the one at work with 4G in it. I just hope noone
> tells it so it suddenly stops working now!
>
> Seriously tho, where is this documented? It would probably be prudent
> to read up on it for any future installs.

Yeah, I'd like to know as well. At work, I'm investigating how to build
a numeric appliance with at least 16GB ram. It'll be installed with
either Gentoo or Centos. Ragardless, wht am I going to do after a
successful install, when I realize I can't get grub working

--
Kind regards,
Mogens V.