Re: Does my processor support 64bit kernel?

[Robert Elz <kre%munnari.OZ.AU@localhost>]

    Date:        Wed, 12 Feb 2014 22:17:00 +0530
    From:        Mayuresh <mayuresh%acm.org@localhost>
    Message-ID:  <20140212164420.GA18746%SDF.ORG@localhost>

  | Trying out iso will of course remove the remaining doubts.

There really aren't any, amd64 will work...

But:

  | RAM 2GB.

You don't need it for that (doesnt mean you couldn't try it, if you want).

  | Among CPU intensive, I run wine

But that one means no amd64, wine is i386 only.

  | If amd64 could run these two better than i386, it'd be worth a try.

It won't run wine at all,   qemu should work, but I doubt you'll detect
any speed differences.

  | Will I need to rebuild pkg applications to amd64 to see benefit if any?

To get a benefit, if there is to be one, yes, otherwise you wouldn't
be changing anything (the kernel may be fractionally faster for some stuff,
but I doubt you would see that).

You can just install an amd64 kernel and leave everything else (except /dev)
alone, but there are a few things that won't work with that setup.

Or you could install a complete amd64 system, in which case to run 32 bit
applications (lie the 32bit /usr/pkg), you need to install the 32bit compat
package (to get 32 bit libraries and such).

  | If yes, is it sufficient to rebuild only wine and qemu or all their
  | dependencies as well?

You cannot mix - the data types need to be consistent throughout the
program, so for qemu where a rebuild is possible, you would need to
build everything it needs.   wine won't rebuild, and the 32bit binary
won't work on an amd64 kernel (it could probably be made to, but no-one
seems interested in attempting it at the minute - it would need more
kernel support.)   For true 64bit wine support youd need to ask the
wine developers.

It sounds as if you should just stick to i386...

kre