32bit vs 64bit

Chris Snook csnook at redhat.com
Wed Sep 17 19:24:42 UTC 2008


Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Rahul Sundaram writes:
> 
>> Sam Varshavchik wrote:
>>
>>> However, nothing stops you from installing 32 bit Firefox, which will 
>>> run just fine on a 64 bit Fedora install.
>>
>> You don't have to do that. Fedora by default installs nspluginwrapper 
>> which works with the 32-bit plugins on 64-bit arch. It also has the 
>> advantage of adding more stability and security (via SELinux policy) 
>> by separating the plugins into different process.
> 
> Maybe, but I was never able to get it to work. Installing 
> nspluginwrapper didn't seem to have any effect. Flash never showed up as 
> a registered plugin in Firefox, and there was absolutely no feedback 
> whatsoever, regarding what the problem might be..  When you install the 64-bit distro, you can still run 32-bit apps, and some of them are even included in the 64-bit repos, like firefox.
> 

Installing 32-bit firefox is probably the easier solution, unless you're so low 
on disk space that you can't afford the 32-bit libraries.  You probably don't 
want firefox using more than 3 GB of memory at a time anyway.  We include 
firefox.i386 in the x86-64 repos because many people prefer this solution.

The 64-bit kernel has a much easier time with memory management on boxes with 1 
GB or more memory, so even if you're running 32-bit apps, it can still help with 
performance.  If you install 32-bit, and want to go 64-bit, you'll need to do a 
full reinstall.

-- Chris




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