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Fedora Core 5 - 64bit Vs 32bit

I have just installed Fedora Core 5 64bit linux in my system. I like it, but there is some problems associated with its being 64 bit.

No Flash

Macromedia(now Adobe) have not released a Flash plugin for 64 bit Firefox. This is in most cases a good thing - as I won't have to watch annoying flash ads. But it is a problem when I am trying to view videos in YouTube or Google Video. Also, Google Analytics is impossible to use without Flash. There are some solutions like using a 32 bit firefox on a 64 bit linux - but I like it better if there is native support. For automated installation see Howto Install 32 bit Firefox with Flash w/sound and Java for AMD64.

Not much of an performance boost in Desktop systems

64-bit binaries are not twice as fast, either. You are unlikely to notice any discernible speed difference, particularly with desktop apps.

What you should (and shouldn't) expect from 64-bit Linux - A must read if you are torn between choosing a 64bit and 32bit OS for your system.

Can't get IE to work

As I have promised in the 'Installing Internet Explorer in Linux' post, I have installed IE using Wine in the system. I did this in a FC3 system(at work) and a FC5 system(at Home). IE works perfectly(or close enough) on the FC3 system - but fails miserably on the FC5 system. I think this is an issue with Wine. I had to hack it a bit to work with my 64 bit system.

Speed

Another problem I have noticed is that the system, on the whole, seems a bit slower than FC3. I have seen other complaints like this on the net - but very few valid solutions.

I am trying to speed thing up a bit by disabling unwanted services. But still I think that the FC3 was faster. I am going to upgrade my RAM to 1GB from the current 512 MB - maybe that will solve the problem.

If nothing works, I will install a 32 bit version of FC5. I will have to re-configure everything - but I need speed.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous said...

"But still I think that the FC3 was faster." - I think your right. Both FC4 and FC5 have seemed slower than FC3 for me, regardless of how many things I tweak or recompile.

Unknown said...

i have some problems with mysql ... when running on FC3 and an athlon 64 3000+ it worked like a charm and after upgrading to FC5 and an athlon 64 x2 4200+ all that mysql did was to stall at the top list of process and working like a shit .. anyone knows something about this or how to make it work again like a charm??

chickoo said...

why use fedora when you are having a rock stable distribution like Debian ? The community doesn't support redhat either. then why should we? its a point o ponder over.