With new 9.10 version coming soon I would like to ask about your experience with 64 bit version.

I've tried 64 bit Ubuntu before and I remember that there was no Flash macromedia for it.
How is it these day? Is there nividia 64 bit driver? Flash?
Are there any other disadvantages to 64 bit? Is it any better than 32 bit version?

Should get 64 bit?

Thanks

Flash support for 64-bit Linux is generally fine these days. However, Java is still a bitch.

I've been running 64bit for a while on the folding rigs. Seems fine to me (typing this in it now).
Flash ads seem to run fine as well.

I've done some digging and found this:
http://www.tuxradar.com/content/ubuntu- ... benchmarks

It seems that 64 bit is faster so I might as well go with it. I only need XBMC and Ktorrent to work properly anyway.

I've only ever used the 64bit version of Ubuntu and it is just fine. Firefox is 32bit and so is the version of flash you use with it. Java isn't much of a problem and can be installed from the repository. I rarely find things that don't work and most of those can be forced to install using the command line.

So I installed 9.10 RC x64 and I am amazed how much memory it uses.

I left my pc on all night and in the evening it was using 470mb with no programs running. This morning it shows 570mb. 100mb increase overnight while doing nothing? All it did was "being a fileserver" for my main rig....
How is that possible? What is it doing with all that ram? I though linux is better than that. Not that it is a problem as it has 8gb to play with

While on the subject of Ram, I always wondered if 32bit linux can address more than 4gb and the answer is no, it can't. At least the XBMC live cd could see only 3.7gb on my system.

I have another question: Will it be sufficient to install later updates to run "official" Ubuntu? I am running RC at the moment. I don't feel like installing it again when official 9.10 comes out...

I haven't tried flash yet, or anything else pretty much, I didn't have time.
However I have one problem with scaling. X server thinks that my 1080p HD tv is bigger than it really is. It got the resolution right (1920*1080) but I can't see edges of the screen on all sides. I will need to scale it down somehow and I am working on the solution. But I might have to come back for you help with this later.

It is supposed to use a lot - it is called caching! Any RAM that isn't used is pointless waste, so it preloads things, keeps things in memory so that it launches programs faster. People need to get over the old DOS 6 mentality where the amount of free RAM is important. If you get close to using it all up, linux will release some that is being used for cache. Same thing happened with Vista.

If you've got 8gb, use the 64bit version. The RC will update itself to the final version if there are any changes prior to release.

I know what caching is, I just didn't know that Ubuntu does is too.

I have to say it is pretty hard work so far. I had to figure out how to automount disks on startup, when I did that sharing folders became problematic but I solved that too.

I've tried Flash but it is not working when installing from Adobe website, it is complaining about 64 bit version and x server is still throwing a strop
I'll play with it more next week, I have only so much patience for one day...

Why on Earth are you installing from the Adobe website?

Bring up the Terminal.

Make sure Firefox is closed and type:

Or it'll also be in "Add/Remove programs" I believe.

It is hard work to start with, mainly because it isn't Windows and does most things differently. There's a different way of doing most things. The reason for the mounting issues in linux is the non-native support for NTFS. Ubuntu uses EXT3 or EXT4 which can't read from NTFS without a plugin.

Most things can be done in the GUI, but when you ask people for help, they'll give you command lines to type in, just because it is easier - copy & paste the text into the terminal and you are done.

Ubuntu 9.10 doesn't have any issues reading or writing to my NTFS drives.

You can set them to auto-mount by inputting a mounting point either during setup or using a tool like Gparted.

I typically use /Windows.

It apparently comes with NTFS-3G pre-installed, which would explain that, but it is still not quite "native" support. Close enough though.

Ok, flash is now working, thanks for that.

What is the archiving program that you would recommend? I was a bit surprised that Ubuntu can't deal with Rar files out of the box, it needs me to install something...

I was surprised the other week to see a rar file. I've not seen one in about five years...
Though I believe they are mainly used in the Windows world...

File Roller is what you want for zip/gz/bz files