On Sun, 2006-05-14 at 22:01 +1000, Matt Bottrell wrote:
* Multimedia via the Packman repository seemed broken... for instance the MPlayer plugin failed to work in Firefox. * Support for multimedia generally failed under 64bit... * No Flash for Firefox with 64-bit browser. Whilst I know these aren't directly related to SUSE... has this support improved at all from 10.0 -> 10.1 Currently I got around it by dropping back to a 32-bit firefox and plugins to get a 'working system'.
And that's how you're going to get around it. Linux doesn't have an equivalent to Win32 on Win64 (WoW) like Windows XP x64 -- although trust me, Linux does _not_ want an equivalent either (can you say, "slam on the breaks performance?" ;-). PAE 52-bit programs can't use 32-bit or PAE 36-bit libraries/plug-ins and vice-versa. For more on how AMD's x86-64 "Long Mode" works, see: http://thebs413.blogspot.com/2005/10/what-is-x86-64-long-mode-memory-model.h...
Should I install 64-bit this time around? Has some of these problems been fixed or is this still outstanding? Is the solution to do a 64-bit install and run some 32-bit apps -- like Firefox, Mplayer, etc.
Yes. One of the reasons I'm switching to SuSE Linux 10.x (and I've been a heavy Red Hat user since Red Hat Linux 4.0, and get most of my consulting work out of Red Hat Enterprise Linux) is because the Fedora Project (and, therefore, Red Hat Enterprise Linux as well) keeps shipping Firefox.x86-64 in its distro. Upgrading is a serious PITA with Red Hat's insistence on Firefox.x86-64 -- unless you maintain your own, local YUM/UP2DATE repositories. I've been reading through some of the forum commentary and it seems that most people have tamed the 32-bit Firefox-Multimedia combination quite easily with SuSE Linux 10.x (and even 9.x). Especially since SuSE ships the 32-bit versions right in the distro and YaST repositories. -- Bryan J. Smith Professional, technical annoyance mailto:b.j.smith@ieee.org http://thebs413.blogspot.com ----------------------------------------------------------- Americans don't get upset because citizens in some foreign nations can burn the American flag -- Americans get upset because citizens in those same nations can't burn their own