[Haifux] Running 32 bit applications (Firefox?) on 64 bit machines

[guy keren]

because this is progress - to move to a 64-bit operating system, and
running all the applications in 64-bit mode.

mixing between 32-bit and 64-bit is not such a good idea.

and why do you think firefox doesn't get above 1GB of RAM?

on my system it currently takes 1.2GB of virtual memory (with 24 tabs
open). not that it'll have a problem to do this in 32-bit mode (where it
can use close to 3GB of virtual memory).

--guy

On Sat, 2011-08-20 at 19:32 +0300, Eli Billauer wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> 
> It has suddenly hit me, that there's no apparent reason to run most 
> executables as 64 bits on a x86_64 machine. I mean, what for? It's not 
> like I expect Firefox to address 1 GB of RAM. If it does, let it crash. 
> On the other hand, plugins and other binaries for 64 bits is a headache. 
> Flash player tops the list, I suppose.
> 
> 
> So it really makes me wonder: Why are the preinstalled binaries on a 64 
> bit machine, well, 64 bit executables? I run a 64 bit machine because I 
> want the *overall* RAM to exceed 4 GB, but except for virtual machines, 
> I don't expect any application to have problems with the 32 bit limitation.
> 
> 
> Insights?
> 
> 
>   Eli
> 
> 
> P.S. Just changed my Firefox to 32 bits. Had to install some libraries 
> manually to get Flash Player going: yum install libpk-gtk-module.so 
> libcanberra-gtk-module.so libcurl.i686 (thanks goes to strace as usual).
>