what to do? amd64 - i386

[Benjamin Lutz]

dick hoogendijk wrote:
> Personally I think it is wiser to wait for fbsd-6.x to make the
> transfer and use my (old) FreeBSD-5.4-i386 version on my new machine.

Yeah, that's a good idea. 6.0-RELEASE is currently scheduled for August
15. Or you could install 6.0-BETA1 now. It runs pretty well here, and if
 you do experience glitches, there's your chance to have them fixed in
-RELEASE.

> But maybe I'm wrong about this assumption. FreeBSD will be my main
> system. I will use a lot of ports and don't mind reinstalling, but it
> should be worthwile. I know the OS itself will be faster, but how about
> ports. Is there a way to find out which ports will or will not build?

Yes. Ports that are known not to build on certain architectures have an
ONLY_FOR_ARCH flag set. Eg:

  cd /usr/ports/www/opera; make -V ONLY_FOR_ARCH

will tell you that opera only works on i386. I noticed though that a lot
of ports that are marked i386 actually work on amd64, sometimes right
away, sometimes with a little bit of hacking.

> Using the i386 version gives me no hassle at all I guess, but.. (??)

...but programs like oggenc are 50% faster in amd64 mode ;)

There are a few things that will not work at all on amd64 right now,
however: OpenOffice.org, proprietary media codecs, hardware OpenGL
acceleration...

Personally, I have two installations of FreeBSD, both i386 and amd64.
They share /home. i386 is my production version, and the amd64
installation is for playing around (or when the added speed comes in
handy). Why not try that arrangement. That way you can periodically
check up on FreeBSD/amd64's progress and decide yourself when you want
to switch.

Cheers
Benjamin
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 186 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/attachments/20050731/a98b1952/signature.bin