On Wed, 2006-Nov-01 06:14:03 +1000, Greg Black wrote: >The state of the software out there is disgracefully far from >being ready for 64-bit platforms -- after wasting weeks in a >vain attempt to get a workable development environment on my >amd64 setup, I've just completed a move to i386 (by a fresh >install).
This doesn't tally with my experiences. I've had an amd64 laptop for most of the year and whilst I've got an i386 partition on it, I almost never use it. In my case, the only things I've missed are win32-codecs (which is unlikely to ever work on amd64) and the java plugin (and I can always use appletviewer if I really need to look at an applet). I've recently discovered that libffi isn't supported on amd64 but don't really need libffi. I agree there is some atrocious software around but things are vastly better than when I first wound up using a DEC Alpha in late 1998. (I'll also admit that I maintain some freeware software that is not 64-bit clean - but it started life on a PDP-11 and I've got more urgent issues to address in it). It would be nice to see the 32-bit emulation improved so that it is possible to build/run the i386 versions of ports on an amd64 system. This would be the best of both worlds. If I had any free time, I would even work on this myself. -- Peter Jeremy
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