Debian Woody, the current stable release for over 2 years, and Sarge, the new upcoming stable release due out in a month or two, support no fewer than 11 architectures. Perhaps surprisingly, AMD64 is not one of them and it won’t be in Sarge either.
Debian on AMD64
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Posting in Debian Alioth right now, my desktop of choice for months. A few minor problems (Grub errors for one, still possible to boot from an earlier kernel) but otherwise rock stable. The only potential downside, dependent on point of view, is the lack of common commercial apps like Flash.
I can do anything my windows box can do equally as good with my Debian box.
Flash doesn’t have an A64 build under windows.
Oh wait, there isn’t even an AMD64 version of windows yet.
You are saying you can do what *you* do in Windows equally well in your Debian box. Well, that’s a relative experience then isn’t it? So far, I’m still more productive on my Windows box than my Debian box.
‘You are saying you can do what *you* do in Windows equally well in your Debian box. Well, that’s a relative experience then isn’t it? So far, I’m still more productive on my Windows box than my Debian box.’
***** I can say this much, at work a few guys run
Debian Linux and they still have to use Citrix for
Outlook, Certain webapps that will not work in
anything except IE and ticket tracking software.
That is what I mean buy having to run both, since
there is so much anger towards a company wanting
to charge a license fee for software. The software
companies are not developing ‘applications’ that will
run on Linux in the Enterprise for the desktop.
Until then, Linux will remain at home and Windows will
remain in the workplace.
a) This is so off-topic
b) Evolution connects to Exchange servers (only reason I can see to require Outlook)
c) If the company didn’t want to be locked into IE, then they shouldn’t have chosen crappy software, now should they? IE runs under WINE, if you’re that desperate; nobody cares if a business’ decisions lead them into vendor lockin–that’s their problem
d) For ticket tracking software either i) get something cross-platform/web based, ii) get something that works under WINE, too, or iii) use Windows; this ties into (c) about why does anybody care if a business is screwing themselves
Oh wait, there isn’t even an AMD64 version of windows yet.
While that’s true, you can have a trial version now:
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition Customer Preview Program
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/64bit/evaluation/upgrade.mspx
When Debian says “1 or 2 months” they mean “when we get around to it”.
Though who knows, maybe they mean it this time.
It seems that the person holding acceptance of the AMD64 port is the ftp master, who just happens to be the ubuntu person who was more than willing to let it in to that distro. Very suspicious.
I’m currently running MDK64 and have Opera 32bit running fine, along with Flash…and I didn’t have to do anything tricky.
Just download the Static *.deb (or Static *.rpm for MDK) instead of the regular version. Install it, then place your 32 bit plugins in the usual folders. I haven’t tried Debian64 so I haven’t tested it, but it worked first time with MDK64. One issue I do have is that I’ve got 64bit Java installed but Opera (obviously) won’t work with it. Is it possible to have 32bit Java installed alongside the 64bit one?
Realplayer installed and worked fine for me too, so maybe this is a Debian specific issue.
how do release versions matter on something like gentoo? do you reinstall everything whenever a new install livecd is released? no, you just run an emerge to upgrade everything – much how users of debian testing or unstable work.
as for trends in software, what’s that meant to mean exactly?
Once a very successful distribution is today on a clear decline caused by mismanagement, lack of vision and politics overshadowing technics.
AMD64 is in fact the second most popular PC platform today. And missing official Microsoft Windows version. This is a a tremendous window of opportunity for Linux, but it will close next year. Similar situation was in early 90, when everybody was running WIN 3.1 on 386 box. That time Linux was technically superior to Windows for a short time.
Ubuntu is in fact a desperate rescue effort of Debian. Five minutes after midnight. But better late then never.
http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/base/amd64/index.xml
Of course, it works ^^
I don’t remember who told me but it seems Debian Woody is being renamed to Debian Fossil.
http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2004/11/msg00986.html
THIS is started the longest thread on the official Debian development mailing list. Even longer discussion than around the second most popular subject: “Incorrect copyright…”
Well what I meant by “sync” was the package management system keeping upto date with software that is out there. If I need the latest version of xorg/beep-media-player/fluxbox/sqlite 9 times out of 10 the portage already has it. While debian has a bit of tarnish on its record from keeping alot of beneficial software held back for various reasons. I’m not dissing debian, just saying I found a more comfortable distro.
Oh also it would be nice if debian would put together an all in one start to finish documentation project for newbs to install debian and end up with gnome/kde/other running. I’ve found the Linux new comers who want a challenge find gentoo easier to install since litterly every command you need to run is explained in detail on an easy to follow web-site.
Just my two-bytes.
I installed both Debian and Gentoo on AMD64 over the last two weeks – and I can tell you that Gentoo’s AMD64 port is far buggier than Debian’s. I installed Debian without ever having to resort to mailing lists or other online help, while with Gentoo, I was on the forums all the time. Eventually, I manged to solve most of the problems, although I still cannot install GNOME because scrollkeeper wouldn’t compile. Several other people reported the same problem.
Frankly, I was a bit disappointed with Gentoo. I expected smooth sailing since it is “release” quality, while Debian is nowhere near there, yet Debian seems much more polished and comparatively bug-free than Gentoo.
I’ve been running ubuntu on an amd64 system for a couple of months with good results. I’ve encountered a couple of small issues, xpdf sometimes decides to segfault during startup and firefox occasionally will crash. System is fast and stable overall.
Please, we all know that all distros works very well with 32bits (32bits!) packages on AMD 64 cpus.
We’re talking about 64bits (64bits!) packages running on AMD64s!
I recently bought a new laptop with a AMD64 processor in it. I initially installed Debian i386 and AMD64 thinking that I would need to fiddle with the amd distribution to get it working and I needed a working destop. I’ve booted the i386 distro a grand total of 5 times – two of them were me selecting the wrong startup option from grub. Everything works great in debian amd64. I’ve done code work, homework, office work and had no problems anywhere. The only time I’m expecting to have some fun is when I try to get wine running – and even then I don’t expect much trouble.
I will be re-compiling my kernel, if only to get processor speed manipulation.
Anyway…
Enjoy!
JC
sid is better for desktop (this is what i use now)
and it will be released when is ready (with stable name)
http://debian-amd64.alioth.debian.org/install-images/
Jan, you’re totally confused. Ubuntu isn’t rescuing debian. Debian is just a metadistro as far as Ubuntu is concerned. Ubuntu polishes up Gnome, other packages and sends them upstream. You look foolish when act like a drama queen.
Jan wrote:
> Ubuntu is in fact a desperate rescue effort of Debian.
My impression is that Debian is somewhat more focused on the server, Ubuntu on the desktop. It could be argued that Debian Sid is for the desktop, but I reckon it’s just more of a playground for devs bringing in new packages and new versions of existing packages.
Incidentally, although the Ubuntu folks talk about freedom and “humanity to others”, neither “GNU” nor “GPL” is mentioned anywhere on their front page. Unfortunately, the Fedora front page is similar.
The Debian folks obviously still care about freedom (and show it on their front page). If they need rescuing, roll up your sleeves and help them out.
while a previous commentor correctly stated that amd64 is the world’s 2nd most popular platform and will be the 1st.
however that doesn’t mean open source developers are all using amd64. hence its npt easy for themm to develop for it. especially if they’re not paid.
You wrote:
My impression is that Debian is somewhat more focused on the server, Ubuntu on the desktop. It could be argued that Debian Sid is for the desktop, but I reckon it’s just more of a playground for devs bringing in new packages and new versions of existing packages.
Incidentally, although the Ubuntu folks talk about freedom and “humanity to others”, neither “GNU” nor “GPL” is mentioned anywhere on their front page. Unfortunately, the Fedora front page is similar.
The Debian folks obviously still care about freedom (and show it on their front page). If they need rescuing, roll up your sleeves and help them out.
The playing ground is Debian Experimental. By the time it rolls in to Sid it is ready for daily use. By the time it roles into Stable it rock solid and had like what 18 months or more of testing to make it under Stable.
I use Debian Sid, daily. It’s excellent and have used Sid for the past 3 plus years.
I don’t think that’s a very strong argument. The vast majority of open source developers is not programming in assembly as far as I know.
The playing ground is Debian Experimental. By the time it rolls in to Sid it is ready for daily use.
Ah, that must be why the GNOME 2.8 package I got on Sid was *completely* broken…
This branch is called unstable for a reason: it’s not always ready for daily use.
We’re talking about 64bits (64bits!) packages running on AMD64s!
Why would you want that in the first place? I mean, seriously, there are some applications which need it, but most don’t. Why not install 32-bit and 64-bit libraries, put your userland 32-bit except for applications which really need it? If performance matters, and you don’t need 64-bit, then use the 32-bit equivelant.
If performance matters, and you don’t need 64-bit, then use the 32-bit equivelant.
Having a AMD64 port just for the sake of having a 64-bit application is silly. However, there actually are a few more benifits than just 64-bit with AMD64 in 64-bit mode. When you run in 64-bit mode several addtional general pupose regisiters and flat file floating point registers (die x87) for the compiler to use during optimization are made availible. These are not availible to your run of the mill IA-32 application, IIRC. I’m not convinved of the dire need ATM, but you do derive benefits beyond just 64-bit: Optimizing Compilers have more resource with which to do their jobs better
Similar situation was in early 90, when everybody was running WIN 3.1 on 386 box. That time Linux was technically superior to Windows for a short time.
Does this guy really know what he wrote about? Or did he REALLY confused.
” Posting in Debian Alioth right now, my desktop of choice for months. “
Uhh…Alioth is not a Debian branch/distro. I assume you’re referring to the fact that you’re using Debian’s AMD64 port which is hosted on alioth.debian.org.
That time Linux was technically superior to Windows for a short time.
I can’t think of a time when Linux wasn’t technically superior to Windows.