Thanks for the response. On Sat, Jul 08, 2006 at 07:23:54PM +0300, Török Edvin wrote: > On 7/8/06, Art Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >I have been writing to the list about two applications that > >are so broken on the AMD64 distribution that they render the > >box pretty useless. > Did you send bugreports for those programs? It turns out that the bugs are present in FC 5 as well. > Btw, what is the appropriate severity level for a package that doesn't > work on a certain architecture at all? Is it release critical? I don't know > >I'm sure one could say that two measly > >applications are no big deal. However, if you do scientific computation > >for a living, and two of the primary tools are broken, you now have > >a rather clumsy paperweight where a computer should be. > You have the option of running 32-bit debian on the box. Because I had so many problems, including some with gnome, I installed FC 5. However, prior to making that change, I had installed the chroot. I have to say that I found this to be an unsatisfying solution. Part of the reason I moved to FC for the time being is that they haven't used the chroot, so that it is possible, for instance, to run a 32-bit firefox that can see the entire file system. This is useful for looking at the html documentation. Now, I could install a complete second version, but this seems a bit perverse. I'm sure this will fall on deaf ears, but I don't think that the pure-64 choice made by debian was appropriate at this time. The virtue of AMD64 is that it CAN execute the 32-bit executables transparently, implying that there shouldn't be a sequestering of these executables and their associated libraries, except, perhaps, in their own directories.
I haven't yet tried installing 32-bit grace under FC5. At this point, I'm doing most of my code development, and all of my 2d graphics (xmgrace) on my 32-bit laptop (Debian stable). > > You have the possibility to run a pure64 debian, _and_ create a 32-bit > chroot for applications > that don't yet work on 64bit. It is explained in the debian amd64 howto. > Using this approach you get the advantages of 64bit for applications > that "support" it (i.e. they work on it), and you can use the 32bit > chroot for the rest, there should be no slowdown, > amd64 can run 32bit instruction natively. > > >Unless such core pieces as the debugging tool (ddd) and the data display > >tool > >(xmgrace) are working, > I am not trying to tell you to use other tools, but here it is what I > use for debugging, and > it works on amd64: > I am using clewn [http://clewn.sourceforge.net/], and I am very happy with > it. > It display the source code in gvim, and allows you to issue gdb > commands, either from vim, or from the gdb "console". It has support > for watches, etc. IMHO it is worth checking out. > > >it is dishonest to pretend that the 64-bit version > >is ready for testing. > Did you mean "testing" as in "debian testing distro, aka etch"? Yes. > > >It would be very nice if you, and other distro's, were > >to put appropriate caveats on the websites, saying that 64-bit is really > >not > >ready for the prime-time desktop. That way, we could make better purchasing > >decisions. > You can still run those apps in 32-bit chroot, so you didn't spend > your money in vain. > > > Cheers, > Edwin -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
