64bit or not ?

[John Hodrien]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2008, Youssef Ghorbal wrote:

> 	As far as you're using distribution packages (deb, rpms and so) for
> software you are installing on 64bit machines every thing is allright.
> 	But, if you compile your own softs from sources, you are going to
> regret 64bits systems with their /lib and /lib64 directories. Some
> libriairies are in the first and others are in the second and you are
> going to patch your ./configure and your Makefiles... I tried to
> compile PHP (with almost all extentions) on a RHEL EM64T system and
> didn't succeeded.

Is that *really* a fair reflection of people's experience of 64bit?  We've run
systems 64bit as and when it's been required, and users seem to have coped
just fine with a split architecture distribution.  The distinction between 32
and 64 is simpler than between o32,n32,n64 with IRIX.

jh

-- 
"Luck and destiny are the excuses of the world's failures."
                                                      -- Henry Ford