Mint x64?

[Rumburak]

Does a x64 Mint version exist? Or planned?

[d00p]

i dont know if a x64 version is planned but i can say that there is no x64 version available of LinuxMint-2.0

[clem]

I'm not sure how much work is actually involved in making a x64 version of Mint. The problem is, I don't have any x64 hardware to test it...

[d00p]

like we said on IRC...Kuja and me could if you want to

[Rumburak]

Yes, please, please, PLEASE....

edit: AMD64 architecture is needed

[Fragadelic]

Browsing and Multimedia are a pain with Linux AMD64 right now.

You either have to get the 32-bit binary browser and mplayer or live without things like flash and the win32 codecs.

If you have an Ati newer video card, you can also forget any sort of gaming as ATI does not make amd64 drivers for their cards.

The closest to usable was kubuntu for amd64 but still not perfect. Too much fiddling around to get everything working just right.

I never di get an issue resolved that I ran into with kubuntu for amd64 which was the fonts being unreadable with firefox32. It would open up a box to save a file or whatever and all that would display were boxes instead of the proper font. Probably needs a bunch of other 32 stuff which wasn't worth doing.

IMHO, the issues with amd64 linux are everything to do with what mint has included that ubuntu doesn't so it would essentially just be another ubuntu.

Performance differences are minimal unless you encode audio and video. Games actually run a bit slower than in native 32 bit linux unless they have an amd64 port which would run a bit faster.

This is just my experience down that road. I'd love to see 64-bit linux be as usable as 32-bit since it would take full advantage of my cpu but it just isn't quite there yet.

[clem]

d00p, any luck on the Bea-Beta-002-x64 ISO ?

[Fragadelic]

I'll help with testing when you get an iso ready. I'll reserve a partition just for it. I'd really like to see it work out since my video encoding is much faster in 64-bit.

[clem]

http://linuxmint.com/releases/Bea- ... 03-x64.iso

I know it works... but the question is: "does it really use 64 bits, or is it just running with 32 ?". If you can test that on your x64 machine and tell me if it takes advantage of the 64bit architecture, it would be great

If it does, and if things look stable, we might release ISO for both x86 and x64 in the future.

Clem

[Fragadelic]

I will download and install it in a couple of hours adn let you know what I find.

[Fragadelic]

http://linuxmint.com/releases/Bea-2.1/LinuxMint-2.1-BETA-003-x64.iso

I know it works... but the question is: "does it really use 64 bits, or is it just running with 32 ?". If you can test that on your x64 machine and tell me if it takes advantage of the 64bit architecture, it would be great

If it does, and if things look stable, we might release ISO for both x86 and x64 in the future.

Clem

It is only the 32-bit version. 686 kernel. All apps seem to be 32-bit.

You would have to start from ubuntu64 6.10, add the 32bit binary firefox32-bin, lib32, mplayer32-bin,etc. It would have to be developed on a 64-bit machine.

[clem]

Ok. Thanks Fragadelic for having tested this.

[Fragadelic]

No problem.

AMD64 is a totally different architecture but it is backwards compatible with x86.

[Rumburak]

You either have to get the 32-bit binary browser and mplayer or live without things like flash and the win32 codecs.

Funny, I had no problems with 32codecs under Suse 10.x x64. Multimedia was working fine too. I used the packman repository for everything and it worked great.

...ATI does not make amd64 drivers for their cards.

Not true! They have amd64 drivers and they are working good atm (kubuntu).

The closest to usable was kubuntu for amd64 but still not perfect. Too much fiddling around to get everything working just right.

Then try Suse 10... thats a pain in the a**, but it worked in the end.

[Fragadelic]

Suse was a bigger headache than kubuntu. I was unable to get 3d drivers to work properly due to incompatibilities with the kernel and my chipset.

Having to run 32-bit apps to get stuff to be usable defeats the purpose of running a 64-bit OS.

Its coming along but nowhere near being really usable for normal desktop use. The only benefit I had from 64-bit was that encoding video was faster.

Having to use 32-bit for all the usual stuff was counterproductive.

I will help with trying to get a usable mint x64 version and if it works well enough it could become my main OS. For now, mint 2.0 is my main os.

[Fragadelic]

You either have to get the 32-bit binary browser and mplayer or live without things like flash and the win32 codecs.

Funny, I had no problems with 32codecs under Suse 10.x x64. Multimedia was working fine too. I used the packman repository for everything and it worked great.

...ATI does not make amd64 drivers for their cards.

Not true! They have amd64 drivers and they are working good atm (kubuntu).

The closest to usable was kubuntu for amd64 but still not perfect. Too much fiddling around to get everything working just right.

Then try Suse 10... thats a pain in the a**, but it worked in the end.

With your comments, I decided to try out Suse 10.1 Remastered to see and it works pretty well so far. Gonna check packman and see how the codecs go.

It even setup my ivtv driver. All I have to do is install the firmware.

[Tiptup300]

What is the point of the 64bit processors, the only difference I ever saw was incompatiabillity and slower more buggy apps?

[Rumburak]

With your comments, I decided to try out Suse 10.1 Remastered to see and it works pretty well so far. Gonna check packman and see how the codecs go.

Uuuuh... I just kicked Suse from my hd and installed kubuntu. Suse is a fat distro and comes with nearly everything. The point is: most stuff which is installed by default will never be used by a normal user. (It slowes everything down...) You have MUCH more possibilities to "fiddle around" I think Suse i better for advanced/professional users.
Im looking for the more lightweight and userfriendly x64-distro. ATM I dont need the win32codecs, i can play my MP3s and watch my *.AVIs (DivX and XviD) with mplayer without probs.

[Fragadelic]

What is the point of the 64bit processors, the only difference I ever saw was incompatiabillity and slower more buggy apps?

If you do any video encoding and you use an app that is 64-bit optimized, you will notice a huge difference. The 64-bit app will encode the video much quicker.

IOn general it will run much quicker but only on apps that are 64-bit optimized. Of course if you are running 32-bit apps, there is no benefit of a 64-bit distro.

[Fragadelic]

With your comments, I decided to try out Suse 10.1 Remastered to see and it works pretty well so far. Gonna check packman and see how the codecs go.

Uuuuh... I just kicked Suse from my hd and installed kubuntu. Suse is a fat distro and comes with nearly everything. The point is: most stuff which is installed by default will never be used by a normal user. (It slowes everything down...) You have MUCH more possibilities to "fiddle around" I think Suse i better for advanced/professional users.
Im looking for the more lightweight and userfriendly x64-distro. ATM I dont need the win32codecs, i can play my MP3s and watch my *.AVIs (DivX and XviD) with mplayer without probs.

Suse's 32-implementation works really well and is seamless to the user. I added packman repo to the sources and nvidia and downloaded the updates from packman and the driver from nvidia and everything works.

Kubuntu wasn't bad but I had a major issue with fonts in Firefox. Every time it popped up a dialog box to download something, it was unreadable since all the fonts were just blocks. I used it for a bit but gave up on it since the block font issue drove me nuts.

My 32-bit OS is mint and for now my 64-bit os is suse 10.1. Gonna try ubuntu 6.10 64 bit as well.