Minor 64 bit Rant

I just have to get this off my chest: Why the bloody h*ll is 64 bit computing so much easier with Windows than it is with Linux? How could such a thing be?!?

Seriously. Heck, I’m a Linux advocate in most scenarios, but this stuff just makes me feel stupid.

I have a home machine dual-booting Ubuntu 9.0.4 x64 and Vista Ultimate x64. With Vista, everything works. No issues with 64 bit’ness, no challenges with installing 32bit software. Nothing to whine about. Is everything running perfectly and optimally? I don’t know or care – I just know all my stuff works. Period.

Linux? Not so much. Want an example? Go get Adobe Air on a 64 bit build working without using a search engine. For me it took a helpful link via twitter after whining… and frankly I still don’t have it all sorted out.

Yesterday I got Firefox 3.5 working on Ubuntu 9.0.4 using Ubuntuzilla. I thought everything was great until I tried a site using Flash. Whoops! Fail. Turns out Ubuntuzilla uses 32bit builds of the software. OK, no problem as it seems to do that well. Now then, try to install 32 bit Flash on an x64 build of the OS – without spending time on a search engine.

Yes I’m whining. Yes, I’m sure this stuff can be fixed. In fact, while writing this (and using a search engine) I found a tip that I should’ve read earlier. But who wants to spend so much time on this stuff?

Honestly though, I might just re-install Ubuntu 9.0.4 as 32 bit and be done with all this hoop jumping. I’d wager that’ll end most of my whining. Will I be able to use all 4GB of installed RAM? Not sure I care anymore.

Fighting the x64 battle too? What are your thoughts?

Possibly Related posts:

Luis

July 18th, 2009 at 8:59 pm · Reply

I had the same problems a while back, but I was always thinking that it was Adobe’s fault. Not sure though, good luck.

Dan Hallock

July 18th, 2009 at 9:16 pm · Reply

Seriously? Because I find 64-bit on Windows to be a bloody pain. You have to install things like TortoiseSVN twice, once in 32-bit and once in 64-bit, because it doesn’t show up in embedded view if you don’t. Oh, and managing ODBC connections? You might think that odbcad32.exe would be the one for 32-bit connections, but no… there are actually two files named odbcad32.exe, and you have to make sure you run c:\windows\syswow64\odbcad32.exe, which you can’t get to from Administrative Tools or Control Panel anywhere. (And what the hell is odbcadm.exe for anyway? Turns out it’s… 16-bit!) And why, exactly, do we need to silently redirect 32-bit program files into a separate Program Files (x86) folder, but not all the time? So a program that installs into Program Files actually winds up in Program Files (x86) but its shortcuts point to Program Files and have to be fixed manually?

Program after program, system after system, 64-bit Windows is just _full_ of issues like those.

On the other hand, the 64-bit system I am comparing and contrasting to is Snow Leopard, not Linux, so maybe my standards are just higher.