Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2007 03:32:44 +0200 From: Fluffles <etc@fluffles.net> To: =?UTF-8?B?RGFnLUVybGluZyBTbcO4cmdyYXY=?= <des@des.no> Cc: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org, Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org>, Martin Turgeon <turgeon.martin@gmail.com>, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: i386 with PAE or AMD64 on PowerEdge with 4G RAM Message-ID: <467B26BC.4070403@fluffles.net> In-Reply-To: <868xadj651.fsf@dwp.des.no> References: <4676BAF0.4030703@gmail.com> <20070618180813.GA13003@eos.sc1.parodius.com> <322073cc0706181415o17ecd532i971d8bdf5ea1dafd@mail.gmail.com> <20070618221022.GA17952@eos.sc1.parodius.com> <868xadj651.fsf@dwp.des.no>
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Dag-Erling Smørgrav wrote: > Jeremy Chadwick <koitsu@FreeBSD.org> writes: > >> Like I said, I don't run 64-bit OSes because I prefer compatibility. >> Believe me, the instant you run into some quirky problem with either the >> kernel or any of its subsystems, or a third-party program (from ports or >> otherwise), the first thing you'll be told is "it works for me on i386, >> have you tried i386?" >> > > Absolute nonsense. FreeBSD is just as solid on amd64 as on i386, and > the people who do most of the kernel work in FreeBSD tend to have > up-to-date hardware (meaning Athlon64, Opteron, or Core 2). > > DES > His point was compatiblity, not stability. And he also mentioned the portstree where many ports are known to be broken for AMD64. Also, it's worth mentioning that nVidia (and probably others) have no AMD64 drivers for FreeBSD which means fallback on "nv" driver for X.org with extremely poor performance. On my 7600GT that meant the opengl performance equivalent of a sub Riva TNT card, not really impressive. And isn't it true that the cause for these missing AMD64 drivers from nVidia is some missing memory mapping issue on FreeBSD AMD64? In that sense it *is* a kernel issue. URL: http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2006-June/016995.html While it is mostly 'proprietary' software that has AMD64 issues, there are lots of ports that are known broken on AMD64 and for this reason (again: compatibility) many people who want to use AMD64 feel i386 is a safer choice. For dedicated servers AMD64 might be great, provided it runs only software known to work on AMD64. However, for more complex setups or desktops i think i386 is a much safer choice. From a user standpoint, there might only be one tier-1 platform; i386. - Veronica
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