Re: FreeBSD 64-bit: Desktop ready?

On 2006-08-30, Bruce Burden <brucegb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Amateur <noob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
:
: i do not understand WHY people wish to run x64 distro ? i386 is ENOUGH when
: you do not have more thatn 4 gb of ram...
:
I have exactly 4BG of RAM. However, I also have 1.5GB
of BIOS, so guess what - only 2.5GB of the 4GB is really
usable.

Sure, I expected to lose some of the memory, but not
1.5GB.

So, AMD64 will go on my 0.5GB of RAM firewall, since
that is easy to recover if I find things are really, really
broken.

They aren't, as such; all other things being equal, the amd64 version
of FreeBSD is as stable as the i386 version. The main areas where
things are not equal are that some drivers are not supported on amd64,
and ditto for some applications (in both cases, because they were not
written with portability in mind).

Both aspects are getting better over time, of course - but the only
way to tell whether it's suitable for your needs is to specify your
precise requirements.

Kris
.

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