64-bit desktop thumbs-down (was: Re: [SLL] Fedora Legacy going away?)

[Glenn Stone]

On Thu, Jan 04, 2007 at 10:11:29AM -0800, John Locke wrote:
>All in all, makes me think 64-bit desktops are not quite ready for
>prime time. Only because of Flash and codecs, really--but that's
>enough to give an unfavorable impression to those people we're trying
>to wean off Windows... We're going to install the 32-bit version next
>week and see if we can better resolve these issues...

Yes, for this very reason I tend to shy away from 64-bit on the desktop.  I
really don't like doing it - Adobe is the one company on the face of the
planet more evil than Microsoft, especially after buying Macromedia...  For
a long time I just did without Flash, but... *sigh*  I wonder if our Russian
friends would be brave enough to reverse engineer a Flash player?  I'm
reasonably certain (having helped do so before) that we could keep them from
spending too much time in jail...  

Or, heck, we could just use GnomeMeeting and save them the birdie ticket if
they wanted to speak about it over here. 

But, yes, between plugins and players and generally keeping one's browser up
to date, I'm all about the 32-bit desktop... and it's just that one thing,
the browser and associated stuff.  OO works fine.  Everything else works
fine.  Heck, it did back in FC4 and Breezy Badger.  It's that all-important
browser that kills you.  

Speaking of browser plug-ins, if you have to use Acrobat Reader and have it
set up to play in the browser rather than as a helper app, go grab the
latest; there's a cross-site scripting bug out.... *sigh*  

(Didn't somebody say that either kpdf or xpdf was capable of reading fill-in
forms now?  If they are I'm gonna dump acroread outright...)

-- Glenn