Saturday, August 28, 2010

64 bit Debian Testing on a low power desktop machine

I've been experimenting with a cheap, low power, quiet computer running the 64 bit Debian testing distribution ("Squeeze"). The experience has included delights, several positives and some negatives.

Delights:

Positives:

  • No virus scanner performance penalty for my disc accesses
  • Frequent software updates keep the system running smoothly
  • Interesting new things to learn in an unfamiliar environment
  • Ample memory (4 GB), a dual core processor and hyperthreading keep the computer feeling responsive even when I run several different demanding tasks

Negatives:

  • My experimental code was not ready for 64 bit, and is still not ready for 64 bit, so it has taken some work to get the experimental code running on this new environment
  • Wireless networking has not been successful on this low end machine. Part of that is my own fault because I can only invest small amounts of time in the setup

My most sincere thanks to the Debian project team, the Google development team, the Hudson development team, and so many others. They've provided a free software stack that looks and feels smooth, interesting, and fun.

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