David Baron wrote: > Obviously. Only the kernel and its modules are 64b. I might try a > few 64-byte programs but everything else as well as other installed > kernels are 32b.
For the most part everything should work fine. But you will still be running a 32-bit userland from /usr/bin for example. That's fine though. You could even do 64-bit program development. Your programs that you compile could be 64-bit if you use a cross-compiler environment. The mix should work fine. > When the 64b kernel is off experimental and after having used it a > while, then the choice needs be made, i.e. get rid of the 32 bit > kernels and start installing real 64b packages. BTW, how do I > instruct apt-get, etc., to do so? At this point in time of apt-get/aptitude the answer is that you can't. See Sven Joachim's posting[1] for an example of the problem. At the moment you would need a complete install from scratch. But what is the need for you to go from 32-bit to 64-bit? You have a working 32-bit system, right? Do you have a lot of ram in it? Are you using more than 3G of ram per process? Also are you using any of the proprietary blobs such as Adobe Flash? (Used to be I would ask about Sun Java too but that is gone now.) Any proprietary binary ATI or NVIDIA graphics drivers? Usually the 64-bit support is poor. If you are installing from scratch then there are advantages to installing a 64-bit system. I only install 64-bit for servers for example. But servers are by design simpler. If you have a working 32-bit desktop then I don't think there is any advantage to converting to 64-bit that would outweigh the effort of doing the conversion. Bob [1] http://lists.debian.org/87ty53qhw2....@turtle.gmx.de
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