Official forums for BZFlag.org

I have Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit, and I have downloaded BZFlag by Synaptic, because there is on the repositories, so I didn't download the deb package from the BZFlag website, and so now I have the 2.0.16 version. But... Is this version of BZFlag compatible with 32 bit and also 64 bit system? is there a only 64bit version?:roll:

32 bit programs will run on a 64 bit operating system with the 32 bit libraries installed.
64 bit programs will NOT run on a 32 bit operating system.

Yes, I know this, but a 32 bit programs will run on a 64 bit operating system not so good (it's going to be not so fast etc...) so I want only to know if there is a 32 bit BZFlag version that can run on 32 and 64 bit operating system and another version of BZFlag at 64 bit (only for 64 bit operating system)

There is no official 64 bit release of BZFlag as far as I know. You either have to modify and compile it yourself or ask/wait for someone to do it.

Actually many 32 bit apps run faster on 64 bit systems. Modern 64 bit CPUs can do some operations twice as fast if they know they are 32 bit operation. 64 bit doesn't mean faster, it means the app can use over 4 gigs of ram. BZFlag does not use over 4 gigs of ram so it gets no benefit from being 64 bit. In fact in some cases it runs slower and uses more ram when built with 64 bit ( pointers are larger).

Also, there really isn't an "official" build for linux in any form (and definitely not any 'deb' file for 2.0.16 on our list of releases). The project only releases binaries for Windows and Mac OSX. It is up to the package maintainers on the various distributions to build the linux binary packages (though some of those maintainers are also BZFlag devs), so it would be them that would build 64-bit packages or not.

Ok many many thanks for all the information

JeffM wrote:Actually many 32 bit apps run faster on 64 bit systems. Modern 64 bit CPUs can do some operations twice as fast if they know they are 32 bit operation. 64 bit doesn't mean faster, it means the app can use over 4 gigs of ram. BZFlag does not use over 4 gigs of ram so it gets no benefit from being 64 bit. In fact in some cases it runs slower and uses more ram when built with 64 bit ( pointers are larger).

But then function arguments are more often passed using
registers, rather than the stack, which is faster. Moreover,
there are 64-bit instructions which can be more efficient
than the 32-bit alternatives (e.g., for rip-relative addressing).

Fox in the Fog wrote:... so I want only to know if there is a 32 bit BZFlag version that can run on 32 and 64 bit operating system and another version of BZFlag at 64 bit (only for 64 bit operating system)

If you installed BZFlag from the official repos on a 64-bit version of Ubuntu then BZFlag was compiled as a 64-bit app. If you install on a 32-bit Ubuntu system then it will have been compiled as a 32-bit app. Most Ubuntu software is like this, unless there is no way to compile as 64-bit. If you see 32 bit libs being installed as dependencies on a 64 bit OS then it is most likely a 32 app that you are installing.

Ah... ok, thanks anomaly, you have been clear