64bit gains

lorsungcu · Post by **lorsungcu** » Tue Aug 05, 2008 12:57 pm

Is there any reason to use 64 over 32bit right now? I looked through the forums and it seemed split, or maybe leaning a bit towards 32bit making more sense. If i were to install on a 64bit CentOS installation, would i run up against any issues? Sorry if this looks like a repeat, but i never saw a definitive answer anywhere.

Thanks
Cullen

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:30 am

Personally unless its a huge server with lots of ram i cant see the benefit of 64 bit yet.
But thats just me

kevin_robson · Post by **kevin_robson** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 9:34 am

I decided the chances of being the first to encounter bugs due to lack of others using it weren't worth the hassle.

It depends if you use the box for other stuff too - which I do - and there are lots of things that dont work or are fiddly to get working.

nivlek · Post by **nivlek** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 10:29 am

For ZoneMinder type applications:

A 64-bit processor will improve both the encoding and decoding of video. Better still, when you view a video file on a 64-bit desktop, you'll see a noticeable difference in speed, resulting in more frames per second and a more film-like playback.

Then there are those who want to go Virtual big time.

Give it 12 to 18 Months and you will wonder why you asked.

MikeH · Post by **MikeH** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 11:31 am

I dumped my 64-bit OS recently in favour of an easy life. I got most of the apps I wanted working fine, but it was often a struggle. Having said that, I think there are far fewer problems with 64-bit now than there were a couple of years ago. But at the moment it's still a finely balanced decision. For those who really need 64-bit crunch-power it''s probably worth the pain. For those, like me, who don't need that power, I think 32-bit is still the way to go.

As you say, though, give it a year or 18 months and things will be much improved.

lorsungcu · Post by **lorsungcu** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 12:36 pm

This brings up another question - what is a big enough server? Right now I'm using a dual xeon 3.06, with 4GB of ram and a 5TB array. I installed the 32bit version, just because it looked like it was going to be a pain and i didn't want to deal with it. There will be about 6-8 cameras to start, but we will definitely be adding more as time goes on. I was hoping to get a dual dual-core or quad cpu machine, but this is what we had lying around. Will it be enough to last a while or should i start shopping around now? Should i have used x64?

jameswilson · Post by **jameswilson** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:28 pm

i think it will be fine mate, sounds like a beast

jfm · Post by **jfm** » Sat Aug 09, 2008 10:17 pm

I have been running opensuse 10.2 64bit version for over a year now on my ZM installation. Recently i also installed a mailsystem on the same machine. Including Squirrel webmail, amavis virusscan and spamassassin spamfilter. I also installed webmin. I can honestly say that I didn't think a second about the fact my suse system was 64 bit when I installed the above.

At work I have been running 64 bit versions of opensuse for 3+ years now on our companys webserver, and suse for almost 2 years on a second server that hosts the web of several of our customers. This one even runs php 4 and php 5 simultanously (two apache installations runing side by side).
And even a third server with suse 64 bit with VMWare on top of that has been running for about a year now. On this one we have at least 8 virtual machines (win xp and win 2003 servers) running at any time.
Not a single glitch on any of the above servers... ever.

I can not se any reasons for not using a 64 bit version of suse/opensuse. How the situation is for other distributions I don't know.

Lee Sharp · Post by **Lee Sharp** » Mon Aug 11, 2008 8:02 pm

I tested it on Ubuntu and it was very good. However, the debs are out of date, and Peter won't do 64 bit.

When he does I will go 64, and 8 gig of ram default. It is so nice to have ram...