Re: 32 vs 64 bit hardware and software

On Mon, 28 Aug 2006 01:40:21 -0700, frankgerlach wrote:

Hello folks,
this is the problem: At the company I am working we have some software
that has been developed on 32bit Linux. It works well, but its not
64bit ready. Unfortunately, new hardware is all 64bit. Changing the
source code of the application for 64bit would be quite time-consuming,
which means we want to postpone that. The following questions arise:
1.) Can I run 32bit Linux applications on a 64bit AMD/Intel hardware ?
2.) Can I run a 32bit Linux kernel on 64bit hardware *realiably* ? 3.)
Is there any way to run a 32bit binary on a 64bit kernel (or do I have
to go with 2. ?) ?
Thanks for your help !

32bit applications run on 64 bit Linuxes without any problems, I'm running
lots of 32 bit apps on 64 bit FC5. Also there is no problem running a 32
bit distro on an A64 or a Core2 Duo, in fact the Core2 Duo is
slightly faster in 32 bit mode then it is in 64 bit mode. I'm running 32
bit FC5 on two of my A64 systems and 64 bit FC5 on an A64 X2 system.

.