Is it okay to install FC2 (32 bit version) on my AMD64 machine?

[chirs_z76]

Is it okay to install FC2 (32 bit version) on my AMD64 machine? I did it yesterday. It boots properly and runs well. There is no sound though.

[superbnerd]

AFAIR, amd64 work for 32bit and 64bit software without much of a performance hit. but if you want help with your sound, just post your pc specs and tells us which programs (if not all) are having problems.

[marks_linux]

THe 32bit works on AMD64, it youre any way new to Linux (like I was) stick wirth the 32bit, much easier to get additional software installed and running, though Iwil be switchin back to at least an option to boot into a 64bit install soon.

Mark.

[Jman]

I'm curious as to why you're not trying 64.

[chirs_z76]

It took me 5 days to download Fedora core 2 (32bit version). After installed it as a second operating system on my PC, it erased my Windows XP partition. I lost all my data and have to recover the whole system. With my friends' help. I finally dual boot my PC. At this point, I suddenly realized that Fedora (64bit version) might be more suitable to my AMD64 processor. However, I really don't want to spent another 5 days to download the application and further more, to take the risk of destroying my Windows again. I would be more than happy to keep the 32bit version Fedora if it can play well with my processor.

By the way, I have already got the sound. I didn't do anything but accidently ran the game Chromium, and then the sound magically came up.

[yannara]

I also first installed 32bit FC2 on amd64, and the graphical installition enviroment did'nt start, so completed the installition progress in text mode. Guess what guys? FC2 32bit didn't start at all. So I recommend to install 64 bit system on 64 hardware ;)

[kbr]

I'm able to run FC1 (32bit) on AMD64. Everything works just fine. Sound is fine, modem is fine, video is fine.

[karlg100]

you should be able to reinstall infinate times without loosing your windows partition, as long as you are careful when using diskdruid and tell it not to erase all your partitions. Also, did you try bittorrent for downloading the ISOs? If you have dialup, go find free wifi access like at a Panera Bread/local library or something. :)

[Woad_Warrior]

karl - on dialup it would have taken weeks to d/l not days as he indicated. (but be that as it may) using bittorrent for getting linux iso's is the best way to get them, i got fedora 3 dvd in just over 3 hours with it. ( i love highspeed net. :) )

[JLF_65]

I also first installed 32bit FC2 on amd64, and the graphical installition enviroment did'nt start, so completed the installition progress in text mode. Guess what guys? FC2 32bit didn't start at all. So I recommend to install 64 bit system on 64 hardware ;)

If you have certain new hardware like a PCIe mobo or new video cards, you might need to install FC3 instead of FC2, but there is NO reason you should have to install 64bit instead of 32bit. Until 64bit mode is activated, there is no difference between the AMD64 chips and the older Athlon XP chips other than the inclusion of SSE2 instructions. I ran 32bit FC2 on my Opteron for months. I run 64bit FC3 now, but I can still run 32bit FC3 as well.

Now, if you have more than 1G of RAM, it makes more sense to use 64bit FC as the kernel can then directly address it all. 32bit kernels are set by default to 3:1 mode - that is, 3G of address space is set aside for virtual user memory, and 1G is set aside for kernel addressing. This means that (1G - amount of space used by hardware) is the maximum amount of memory the kernel can access without swapping pages via the MMU. This is no big deal for less than 768M of RAM. Once you go higher than that, the kernel starts needing to swap memory via the MMU, slowing its operation.

One thing you can do is recompile the kernel for 2:2 mode - use 2G of space for the user and 2G of space for the kernel. That does limit how much stuff an application can have in memory. It's not a big deal unless you are doing things like magazine quality scanned image manipulation, or complex 3D rendering. By going to 64bit FC, you avoid this issue altogether. The 64bit address space has more than enough space for the user and the kernel no matter how much RAM you have. It is yet another reason 64bit mode is faster than 32bit.