Re: How to run Microsoft Internet Explorer on NetBSD?

[Swift Griggs <swiftgriggs%gmail.com@localhost>]

On Fri, 29 Jan 2016, Mayuresh wrote:
> This may be an OT.

Nah, it's "user" related. Spot on the topic. :-)

> I don't think using i386 is a bad idea either, unless one has some 
> specific reason to use amd64.

I mostly agree with this sentiment.

> I recently switched to amd64. I gained nothing, at least for my purpose, 
> but lost wine.

I may be completely misremembering, or perhaps these reasons are merely 
superstitions, but I had a couple of reasons for opting for AMD64. Folks, 
please disabuse me of these notions if they are wrong.

* At some point I thought that PAE wasn't working properly on i386. My
  workstation machine has 24G of RAM (yeah yeah, but it was on sale). I
  have a foggy recollection of i386 only letting me access the first 4GB.

* I get slightly better performance on system benchmarks (again mostly the
  memory benchmarks) with AMD64. Interestingly, lately with NetBSD 7.0
  some benchmarks are beating Linux across the board on the same hardware
  (I use removable drives on the same workstation). I was very pleasantly
  surprised at that.

However,

* It seems like at some point flash was working on i386 but not on AMD64,
  but that may have been a long time ago.

* As you point out wine seems perpetually broken on AMD64. I'm not
  sure why, since it works on Linux x86_64. However, I'm not trying to
  make light of anyone's efforts. Everything takes work.

* Also some time in the past I had major USB bus error problems with AMD64
  but I'd try i386 and the system behaved fine.

All in all, Mayuresh, while I can see some reasons to run AMD64, I'm 
really on the same wavelength as you are - what's the point of hassling 
with AMD64 anyway ? Perhaps someone will point out the "killer feature" 
that we missed. :-)

-Swift