[LAU] Audio Distribution Proposal...

[Brent Busby]

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009, Mark Knecht wrote:

> WRT to the original audio distribution proposal I want to throw out an 
> idea that Linus and some of the other high-end kernel developers have 
> been discussing on the LKML, and it rings true as possibly important 
> for folks like us doing audio work. The comment was that distribution 
> packagers haven't accepted the idea of providing a 64-bit kernel with 
> a 32-bit tool set. The idea, as I understand it, is that with a 64-bit 
> kernel you get the potential advantages of using all the features of 
> your newer 64-bit processor - newer hardware flags, more memory. On 
> the other hand 32-bit apps might work better in virtualized 
> environments and, in my experience, would provide more backward 
> compatibility with older audio and Windows stuff. Linus and others 
> seem to think it's a a good thing to do, but no one is doing it yet. 
> I'm not qualified to say what's good or bad about it.

Well, that's not a setup I'd want for myself (though I do see the 
advantages you're mentioning), but for people who want to do that, it's 
probably not something that the distro needs to specifically package. 
There's nothing at all really stopping you from putting a 64-bit kernel 
on your 32-bit install, and actually at work, I have even done that on 
some of the nodes of one of our research computational clusters, where 
almost everything is 32-bit, but we still want the extra memory.  You 
just drop your kernel on.

The only package I've seen that seems to absolutely hate that setup is 
iptables, since it comes with userland commands that integrate very 
tightly with what's in the kernel, and it doesn't seem to work to have 
the binaries be 32-bit and the kernel be 64.  You'd probably have to get 
a 64-bit iptables package to make that work.

-- 
+ Brent A. Busby	 + "We've all heard that a million monkeys
+ UNIX Systems Admin	 +  banging on a million typewriters will
+ University of Chicago	 +  eventually reproduce the entire works of
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+ James Franck Institute +  we know this is not true." -Robert Wilensky