[wellylug] Re: How to get a copy of the latest MEPIS/Ubuntu

Daniel Pittman daniel at rimspace.net
Tue Feb 6 13:30:00 NZDT 2007


"Carl Beuke" <drbeuke at gmail.com> writes:

[...]

> In the end, I went into Dick Smith Electronics (the one next to the
> Cotton Store in the CBD, I think it's on Vivian St) and bought their
> copy of Ubuntu 6.10. (Tx to those who suggested this). It costs $10
> and comes with two DVDs, a standard edition and one optimised for
> AMD64 chips. I gather that there's a lot of extra open source software
> on there, using all that extra DVD space, which is what I wanted. 

The DVD version contains a large number of extra packages from the
Ubuntu repositories -- all, I believe, of 'main'.  Saves a lot of
downloading.

One bit of advice though: the AMD64 version is *compiled* for AMD64, not
just optimized for it.  It can't run on a 32-bit processor -- and isn't
entirely binary-compatible with 32-bit Linux software.

For anything open source that isn't a problem, and a lot of the 32-bit
binary only software out there runs fine.

It presents some problems where, for example, calling conventions for
shared libraries vary though -- because that makes things like the Flash
plugin (a 32-bit binary shared library) incompatible with the 64-bit
Firefox.

Regards,
        Daniel
-- 
Digital Infrastructure Solutions -- making IT simple, stable and secure
Phone: 0401 155 707        email: contact at digital-infrastructure.com.au
                 http://digital-infrastructure.com.au/




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