Comments on: Is the 64bit desktop really still so far off?

By: James McPherson

James McPherson — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 04:01:18 +0000

I have no problems with flash inside firefox3 on OpenSolaris. Ditto for webex. I don’t use skype, and if I wanted to try the VoIP thing I’d got with ekiga. I believe you can also run skype inside an lx-branded zone. You might even be able to run it inside VirtualBox. You know that OpenSolaris is a tier-1 host platform for VirtualBox, right?

By: Philip Antoniades

Philip Antoniades — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 20:19:02 +0000

I love opensolaris – I do! – but the problem I run into there is still a lack of third-party or community support (so far). Skype? Flash? Webex?

@192.18.101.5 – You are right, I really don’t care about application "bitness" if it’s not using >4G of RAM (and nothing should on this box!). It’s the "new source of instability" that I mind. Maybe it’s 32bit Skype accessing a 64bit Video4Linux layer – I don’t pretend to know. But more things broke.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 15:35:42 +0000

I second the first anon poster. It’s nice that you comment on OpenSuse and Fedora, but you really ought to try OpenSolaris as well — you’ll like what you see, provided that you first understand that just because the kernel is 64-bit doesn’t mean that all apps should also be 64-bit.

I also second Phillip Wagstrom — what’s crucial is that the *kernel* run in 64-bit mode and that apps that would benefit from being 64-bit also be 64-bit. I don’t see why Skype needs to be 64-bit, for example — can you clarify?

By: Phillip Wagstrom

Phillip Wagstrom — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:39:33 +0000

And run 64-bit along with 32-bit applications all at the same time. None of this 64-bit only or 32-bit only nonsense.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:12:34 +0000

Of course, if you ran your employer’s product you’d already be able to use all that memory.