[6991] in Release_7.7_team
Re: 32 bit dialups vs. 64 bit clusters...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan Reed)
Sun Oct 3 19:58:57 2010
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From: Jonathan Reed <jdreed@MIT.EDU>
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Date: Sun, 3 Oct 2010 19:58:40 -0400
Cc: "release-team@MIT.EDU" <release-team@mit.edu>
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To: Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu>
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(This has been discussed a lot over zephyr, but this was sitting in my Drafts folder, so I'm sending it anyway)
As Alex said, we've had a couple of requests over the years. I'm failing to find the actual mail right now, but I know that EECS staff have requested it several times, as well as students.
Also, Mark Manley was very enthusiastic about upgrading the dialups to 64-bit, because apparently the performance of the VMs will be much improved. We didn't want to have the dialups and clusters have architecture skew (differentiating between Solaris and Linux is easier than differentiating between Linux x86 and amd64).
I'm very interested in hearing specific reasons not to go to 64-bit, but the Ubuntu docs I've found seem to be short on reasons, except for things that Ubuntu won't really support (fglrx, Flash, etc). I certainly agree there was in the past a lot of hesitancy to go to 64-bit, but I think the balance is tilting in away from 32-bit these days. For example, we still have apps which don't run well (or at all) under 64-bit Windows, but more and more students are coming in with 64-bit Windows on their new machines.
-Jon
On Sep 30, 2010, at 5:41 PM, Greg Hudson wrote:
> It may be too late to change course on this, but:
>
> * Back in the day, when people suggested we move to 64-bit, I was never
> able to get a specific reason why it was desirable. Is there a specific
> reason now?
>
> * If you go to ubuntu.com and click "Download Ubuntu", the 64-bit
> desktop install CD is "Not recommended for daily desktop usage." I
> don't really know why, but when I noticed that yesterday it made me
> wonder about the decision to go 64-bit in Athena clusters.
>
> I don't have a personal stake in this; I just wanted to express some
> skepticism that it's better to be leading-edge than trailing-edge on
> this front.
>
>
