CentOS - Aug 2005 - Firefox, Flash and Java on CentOS 4.1 x86-64

First of all, I just want to say *again* how happy I am with CentOS. 
Across our boxes and our clients boxes, we're running it on more than 20 
machines at the moment and it's by far the most painless OS to 
administer in detail that I've ever used. (Of course, I'm an old Slak 
hat, but ...) Thanks so much to the community and the maintainers.

We've recently run into a problem with a dual-opteron system that is 
running LTSP and serving up X and Firefox to a whole bunch of diskless 
clients. We're using the x86-64 build of CentOS, with the appropriate 
Firefox package. The client users have all been asking for Flash, since 
many websites are unusable without Flash these days ... but there's no 
64-bit build of the Flash plugin. (Thanks, Macromedia! You suck!)

What's the best way to provide Flash (and maybe Java?) with Firefox on 
this server box? How big will the performance hit be from running non-64 
bit packages? Any specific tips & hints?

Thanks!

-Karl Katzke

Karl S. Katzke wrote:
> First of all, I just want to say *again* how happy I am with CentOS. 
> Across our boxes and our clients boxes, we're running it on more than 
> 20 machines at the moment and it's by far the most painless OS to 
> administer in detail that I've ever used. (Of course, I'm an old
Slak
> hat, but ...) Thanks so much to the community and the maintainers.
>
> We've recently run into a problem with a dual-opteron system that is 
> running LTSP and serving up X and Firefox to a whole bunch of diskless 
> clients. We're using the x86-64 build of CentOS, with the appropriate 
> Firefox package. The client users have all been asking for Flash, 
> since many websites are unusable without Flash these days ... but 
> there's no 64-bit build of the Flash plugin. (Thanks, Macromedia! You 
> suck!)
>
> What's the best way to provide Flash (and maybe Java?) with Firefox on 
> this server box? How big will the performance hit be from running 
> non-64 bit packages? Any specific tips & hints?
>
> Thanks!
>
> -Karl Katzke
> _______________________________________________


You could run the 32-bit Firefox & 32-bit plugins, they are *supposed* 
to work seamlessly under the x86_64 OS. YMMV & all that. I have seen 
much talk about this on the SuSE AMD64 list, and this recommendation has 
floated out more than once.

-- 
	William A. Mahaffey III
---------------------------------------------------------------------
	Remember, ignorance is bliss, but
	willful ignorance is LIBERALISM !!!!

>On Wed, 2005-08-10 at 22:05 -0500, William A. Mahaffey III wrote:
>> Karl S. Katzke wrote:
>>
>> > First of all, I just want to say *again* how happy I am with
CentOS.
>> > Across our boxes and our clients boxes, we're running it on
more than
>> > 20 machines at the moment and it's by far the most painless OS
to
>> > administer in detail that I've ever used. (Of course, I'm
an old Slak
>> > hat, but ...) Thanks so much to the community and the maintainers.
>> >
>> > We've recently run into a problem with a dual-opteron system
that is
>> > running LTSP and serving up X and Firefox to a whole bunch of
diskless
>> > clients. We're using the x86-64 build of CentOS, with the
appropriate
>> > Firefox package. The client users have all been asking for Flash,
>> > since many websites are unusable without Flash these days ... but
>> > there's no 64-bit build of the Flash plugin. (Thanks,
Macromedia! You
>> > suck!)
>> >
>> > What's the best way to provide Flash (and maybe Java?) with
Firefox on
>> > this server box? How big will the performance hit be from running
>> > non-64 bit packages? Any specific tips & hints?
>> >
>> > Thanks!
>> >
>> > -Karl Katzke
>> > _______________________________________________
>>
>>
>>
>> You could run the 32-bit Firefox & 32-bit plugins, they are
*supposed*
>> to work seamlessly under the x86_64 OS. YMMV & all that. I have
seen
>> much talk about this on the SuSE AMD64 list, and this recommendation
has
>> floated out more than once.
>>
>Right ... the only option would be to remove the x86_64 firefox and
>install the i386 one ... but that might require MANY other i386
>libraries. (I can't test it here).
>
>Tell them to get over it is another option :)
>
>Should not be a huge performance issue ... at least I haven't noticed
>any earth shattering performance enhancements between the x86_64 and
>i386 distros when installed on x86_64 machines (that one could feel via
>the GUI screen).
Unfortunately, telling them to get over it ain't anywhere near an option
here. If it was my office ... well, I've worked without flash for aeons
because I don't like it and I just don't visit sites that use it
exclusively. But this client of mine is a sales company and needs to visit
these sites.

I guess we'll work on it over the weekend to see if we can solve the
dependency nightmare and get it up and running. It's too bad we don't
have
another 64-bit system hanging around to test on. Thanks!

-Karl Katzke