[LAU] new laptop redux

[Mark Knecht]

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 6:27 PM, Lee Revell <rlrevell at joe-job.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 2:21 AM, Peder Hedlund <peder at musikhuset.org> wrote:
>> Quoting Mark Knecht <markknecht at gmail.com>:
>>
>> All I can say is that while 64-bit
>>> Linux works, and works well, there are a lot of real world limitations
>>> in terms of accessing media from the web. While no where near as bad
>>> as they used to be you will likely run into issues with Java and Flash
>>> under 64-bit, and the decoders for things like Windows media file
>>> types are almost always a bit more difficult than on our 32-bit
>>> machines
>>
>> Adobe has just released a 64bit beta of flash 10 for linux:
>> http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/flashplayer10.html
>
> Actually I've found 64 bit Ubuntu 8.10 with 32 bit Flash 10 plugin via
> nspluginwrapper to be the best Linux Flash setup.  If Flash crashes,
> rather than taking out the whole browser as a native plugin (32 or 64
> bit) would, only the crashing instance dies.  With this setup on 8.04,
> all Flash applets would die if one crashed.
>
> It's still not great, as Flash regularly pegs one core at 100% CPU
> requiring the offending npviewer.bin process to be killed, but at
> least the browser survives.
>
> Lee

Lee,
   Do you really feel that the Flash/nspluginwrapper setup you
describe above, which is pretty much equivalent to what I'm running on
Gentoo, is *better* than the same version of Flash running on a 32-bit
platform with the same browser/kernel/desktop?

   The key here, in my mind, is basically an argument for KISS. If
64-bit isn't demonstratabely better then why should Dave run it?
(Other than he just want's to which is a fine reason!)

   This argument has to also be extended to all the other software
that makes the user experience go - Java, Java within browsers, Wine,
VST's, etc.

   I'm not saying 64-bit doesn't work. I'm typing this message on a
64-bit machine and this specific box has never run anything except
64-bit Gentoo so I know it works. I simply feel that it doesn't work
*better*. At BEST it's equivalent, and in my experience it's always
somewhat behind for a desktop/DAW type machine.

Thanks,
Mark