[CentOS] Re: Firefox, Flash and Java on CentOS 4.1 x86-64 -- Firefox, multimedia i386 packages

Thu Aug 11 12:52:48 UTC 2005
Bryan J. Smith <b.j.smith at ieee.org>

On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 22:05 -0500, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
> You could run the 32-bit Firefox & 32-bit plugins, they are *supposed* 
> to work seamlessly under the x86_64 OS. YMMV & all that. I have seen 
> much talk about this on the SuSE AMD64 list, and this recommendation has 
> floated out more than once.

On Thu, 2005-08-11 at 05:30 -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> Right ... the only option would be to remove the x86_64 firefox and
> install the i386 one ... but that might require MANY other i386
> libraries. (I can't test it here).
> Tell them to get over it is another option :)

This is _exactly_ what I do.

I install Firefox i386 and many other components, including some of the
Multimedia (like MPlayer) from the i386 pool.  I ensure I _remove_ the
x86_64 versions so YUM does not update them.  This adds a few steps to
auto-updating the i386 versions, but it's well worth it.

I'm going to start playing with SmartPM when I have time to see if it
can handle it's advanced form of Pinning so I can automate updates
without having to do anything special.

Of course, it would help if Red Hat shipped i386 packages for such Web
components!

> Should not be a huge performance issue ... at least I haven't noticed
> any earth shattering performance enhancements between the x86_64 and
> i386 distros when installed on x86_64 machines (that one could feel via
> the GUI screen).

AMD x86-64, as implemented in Athlon64/Opteron isn't so much about
desktop performance differences.  It's about the 1-4+GiB memory
performance differences, I/O, etc...  There are a few cases, especially
if you optimize for the Athlon core's 3+3 ALU+FPU pipes, but other than
that, it's really about the architecture and memory.


-- 
Bryan J. Smith     b.j.smith at ieee.org     http://thebs413.blogspot.com
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