Re: new software if moving to amd64?

On 10/03/2014 11:20 AM, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 03, 2014 at 08:38:51AM -0700, Ray Andrews wrote:
>> Gentlemen,
> Are you sure that is always true?  Sure I may be, but not everyone on
> the list is likely to be.
Mere, vulgar flattery ;-)
>> I just upgraded to the 'amd64' kernel.  I've always been a 32 bit
>> lad up till now. The kernel runs fine, but I'm wondering if there is
>> anything else  to do, specifically if my software needs to be
>> somehow changed from 32 bit to 64 bit.  There seems to be no special
>> repository for 64 bit.  Or am I all good?
> Well you can run a 64 bit kernel with 32 bit user space.  You can even
> create chroots with debootstrap that are amd64 architecture inside and
> that works too.
>
> Of course with multiarch in wheezy and above you can even install
> packages from both i386 and amd64 at the same time (using apt-get
> install packagename:architecture), after telling dpkg once to add the
> other architecture.  dpkg has a concept of the default architecture
> of an installation which was whatever it was installed as initially,
> although you can change it.
>
> The sources.list doesn't change in general, it simply starts downloading
> all the enabled architectures that you told dpkg to use (using dpkg
> --add-architecture).
>
Ok thanks, that's a good start right there.  Looking at various blogs 
and such, it seems no two people can agree if the conversion to '64 is 
beneficial or even wise.  I have only 2 GB of RAM on this machine, so 
that's no motive.  I hear talk of various problems on the one hand, vs. 
claims of better performance on the other.  Can I sorta slide from '32 
to '64 by degrees? I mean, so that whenever I do an upgrade it will 
convert what's convertible while leaving the rest of the system '32?  Or 
should I start afresh? Or should  I just leave this older machine alone?