AMD64 Second Life client?

Hello.

Just wondering if there's any plans to release an AMD64 optimized SL client? Or has anyone noticed a speed increase of sorts running the client on AMD64 Ubuntu?

(I just upgraded to AMD64, deciding whether to install 64-bit Ubuntu)

Rowan

I run the SL client on my AMD64 Gentoo box (with the compat libs). I would not expect a 64bit build of SL for quite a while. Once the 32bit client is out of alpha, getting Linden Labs to create biniaries for other arc's may be possible (although it does depend on how 64bit friendly the code base is).

As fas as 64bit vs 32bit goes, there are some real performance gains to be had at the expense of a few apps being tricky to get going. Does it translate into extra FPS in SL, I have no idea

and bear in mind with ubuntu in particular they use a pure 64bit format. which i've been told by their devlopers is "just plain better" but in the real world translates to a pain in the ass. at least until it's the standard way of handeling librarys.

I'm running the SL client on Ubuntu Dapper inside a 32 bit chroot. You are going to get zero performance gain running a 32 bit app linked against 32 bit libraries on a 64 bit CPU, whether or not the OS is 64 bit. I hear you can setup SL in Ubuntu so you just have to type linux32 secondlife, but I have all my other 32 bit apps (firefox with plugins, mplayer, etc) in the chroot already so it was convenient.

Also remember that 64 bit apps have a larger code size and take up more memory (with the double width pointers and sometimes larger floating point values), but there are some performance gains to be had in specific tasks. The real beauty of 64-bit to me is the greater potential precision of floating point calculations, and addressing a larger memory space for your new PC with 16GB of memory.

Going to echo this as a fellow AMD64 Gentoo user myself (2.6.15 r7) running SL in 32bit GL. If anything, I want to see them get the alpha client into package utilities first.

But ehhh... I'da know how much improvement there would be with native 64 mode. Dual core mode would also be nice, but given the Linden Lab is still a comparably small company, I wouldn't hold my breath.

The problem holding back most x86_64 users is libuuid.so.1.2 (libuuid.so.1) which on 64 bit systems should be 32 bit compatible. SL does not work with the 64 bit lib in 32 bit mode. BUT taking the 32bit i386 libuuid.so.1 file and plading it in the SecondLife/lib will allow second life to work on x86_64 systems. This seems to be all that keeps it from running on Ubuntu x86_64 (dapper drake). This file should come with SL, would help x86_64 users get up a nd running.

There is linux32 available as well so running SL on a x86_64 system would be:

$ linux32 ./secondlife

This makes secondlife think it is running on i686. Though from testing so long as libuuid.so.1 is available as 32bit, it works.

Maybe I'm just dense, but SL ran just fine on Gentoo 64 using the standard ebuild for X11 (with Mesa) and first-party X drivers courtesy of nVidia (configured for 32 bit compatability).

So um... why? Unless those libs don't come with Mesa or other card vendor drivers, I mean.

Gentoo AMD64 and Ubuntu AMD64 builds take a bit different approach. From my experience Gentoo takes a more compatibility focused route, where the Ubuntu 64 platform is closer to what you might call a "true" 64 bit platform (whatever that means). I would seriously recommend anyone in Ubuntu who has taken the 64 bit leap to setup a 32-bit chroot; if you follow the instructions on the wiki line by line everything will go fine and you will never have to worry about 32/64 bit compatibility again. Just drop any program that's having problems in to the chroot.

Having said that when I reboot I'm going to try copying the libuuid file(s) in to the secondlife ./lib directory and seeing how linux32 handles it after that.

Yeah, no need for a chroot. I thought it was to much work. Ubuntu is full 64bit, but 32bit apps should still work!

Put libuuid.so.1 in /secondlife.lib and libgl.so.1 as well, there is a so.1.2 part to those files too. So fou files total. Don't worry they are small. Then install the linux32 package. Run secondlife with: linux32 ./secondlife

There ya go, SL on x86_64 without much trouble at all. Just took a few days of poking around, though getting the nvidia drivers working took longer.

I think for cleaner programming these files should be included with the secondlife download, would make the whole thing much more accepting of x86_64 systems. I have only tested this on Ubuntu Dapper Drake, results may vary. Note that debian does not follow the same 64bit beliefe that Ubuntu does!