All distributions do it wrong (for someone).. [LWN.net]

All distributions do it wrong (for someone)..

Posted Apr 14, 2008 18:19 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
In reply to: My kid hates Linux (ZDNet) by andikleen
Parent article: My kid hates Linux (ZDNet)

I am a Fedora/CentOS user.. and have dealt with my share of 64/32 bit problems with that
versions of lib handling. The issue is that it works great for some things and absolutely
horrible for others. But the core problem is not the distro they person chose, but that they
didn't ask their 'user' what they wanted. Finding out that they use X,Y, and Z sites and need
ActiveX or Itunes is going to kill the move right there. Finding out that they use Flash means
you will want to make sure that 64bit/32bit works before you start. 

I say this from the bitter experience of changing my parents computers over to Linux and
finding that nothing they did regularly was supported. That made the box secure, but useless.

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64 bits overkill?

Posted Apr 14, 2008 23:05 UTC (Mon) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link]

Stupid question: why install a 64-bit version for your parents? My mother's laptop runs fine with 32 bits.

64 bits overkill?

Posted Apr 14, 2008 23:23 UTC (Mon) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link]

I think 64 bits is overkill. In my case, I just installed the latest 'desktop' friendly 32 bit
Linux at the time.. which turned out to be not desktop friendly enough. They could not use
their bank, they could not get into some .gov sites (this was while adobe was dithering on
upgrading flash to linux), the grandkids could not play the website games they wanted.. etc.
The questions are the same though.. and would have told me that a 64 bit was not appropriate
and that their main websites were not supported.