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I'm curious to hear from people running 32-bit rather than 64-bit and why.
No arguments about the merits of one version or the other. No opinions, egos, or body part measuring contests. No discussions about whether 32-bit is dead.
I have 32bit running in a VM so I can easily make compat32 packages. Most of the time I can get them with sourcing /etc/profile.d/32dev.sh, but sometimes it's easier to just load the VM.
I haven't used 32bit on real hardware in probably over a decade... in fact, it was probably when Slackware64 had its first stable release at 13.0.
Still running an old eMachines EM250 netbook with an Intel N270 Atom 32bit processor.
I like the form factor for my daily commute, small but robust with a comfortable keyboard and full size USB ports as well as RJ45 port. Plug in a VGA to HDMI adapter and external screen displays to newer hardware are possible.
Mostly used for web browsing, email, script development (R and bash), PDF viewing and ksudoku, but can also handle light document and spreadsheet editing. Has also been known to work as a PXE server and for network testing. It has always been a versatile play machine for trying things out.
I'm curious to hear from people running 32-bit rather than 64-bit and why.
There are still some things which don't work in a straight 64 bit system. Eg: Warcraft III in Wine. So for that, I use AB's multi-lib package.
Quote:
Originally Posted by upnort
Just pleasant sharing please.
While my main machine is fairly modern, I'm a dinosaur at heart... So the P4 which I built from good quality parts in 2004 still gets a regular run. And for that, the only OS I've ever considered is Slackware.
I've got x86 machines around. Replacing working x86 machines with ARM or x86_64 while keeping all the features, well, that'd cost money.
Having a separate 32bit build environment on my amd64 desktop for keeping those old machines up to date, it costs me nothing.
I've separated it by partition so it's a full x86 PAE subsystem on amd64 host which also runs 4 other systems plus KVM.
Multilib I've tried once, but didn't like. Prefer a clean cut between 32bit and 64bit system cause it's easier to maintain.
32 bit SlackwareARM -current on RaspberryPi 4, using the Sarpi website's installer and kernel packages. I managed to install the Arduino IDE modifying the Slackware 14.2 Slackbuild after first installing the sarpi jdk package, and am now doing more of my Arduino work (well, more like play) on the RPi than on my desktop.
64 bit Slackware 14.2 on my desktop. My main machine and most used OS.
Very pleased with how both are working.
Edit: on reading franzen's post 11, I realized I didn't answer the why: SlackwareARM is 32 bit. If a 64 bit port comes, I will switch to that right away, although I don't see 32 bit limiting me in what I do. External packages aren't a barrier: the only architecture specific one I've added, Arduino IDE, is available 64 bit ARM.
Installed on desktops (bought 2007 and 2016, and an inherited home build) since I started using Linux in 2016: Slackware, other Linuxes and OpenBSD have only ever been 64 bit. I never had a reason to install a 32 bit Linux, but in distro hopping I've tried 32 bit live versions that worked fine. I've kept some in case I ever do anything on a 32 bit machine.
TKS
Last edited by TheTKS; 02-24-2020 at 10:20 AM.
Reason: Answer the why
I'm curious to hear from people running 32-bit rather than 64-bit and why.
I'm running 32-bit on a raspberry-pi4, and a 32-bit lxc container on a 64-bit host to have 32-bit wine for
a tax software(Elster).
When the official arm-port changes to 64-bit, i'm happy to change my rpi4 to 64-bit.
Also the 32-bit lxc container may come from a diffrent distro, which is easy done with lxc.
At this point all of my x86 only systems are stacked up in a closet. I have a Pentium II 450mhz that has Slackware 13.37 installed on it, but that was just playing around seeing if I could get something modern working on it. Couldn't get 14.1, .2, or -current to boot on it.
I have one that I pull out sometimes, AMD AthlonXP 2800+, 1gb ram, runs Windows 2000 and 98se, I like to run old dos and Windows games on it.. If by chance the handful of x86_64 machines I had all died and I really needed to get online with a modern browser it would be this PC with Slackware 32-bit, though I would upgrade the ram to 2gb since it would be running more modern software (98se starts to fall apart if you have too much, you can limit it with a config file modification but I find after 1gb that doesn't work.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by rkelsen
There are still some things which don't work in a straight 64 bit system. Eg: Warcraft III in Wine. So for that, I use AB's multi-lib package.
I have a bunch of old games I run through wine.. including the one you mentioned.. between that and steam I always end up needing multilib.
Distribution: Slackware 64 -current multilib from AlienBob's LiveSlak MATE
Posts: 1,081
Rep:
I have an old Asus eee900 which I keep upgraded to the latest -current as a kind of spare, should my main laptop die suddenly. Not exactly fast, but at least I can check email, browse the web, and write a document if needed.
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