It's definitely looking like it's going that way. I understand that the devs should be in control of the product but without contributors and users it's all for nothing.
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Well, if there is any upside, those of us who already have sidux systems in place ought to be able to continue to use them. Worst case is that we may ultimately have to pull out sidux specific stuff if it goes totally AWOL.

I will say that my existing 2008.04 Preview 1 implementation on my Gateway PA6A 17 " portable, my 2008.02 implementation on my Lenovo Y410 laptop, and whatever I have on my Dell Dimension 4100 work as well or better than anything else I have installed.

I've always thought that antiX was my fastest "full featured" system, and I will always love antiX, but in some recent tests that I've done in Virtualbox OSE, both on the Gateway sidux implementation and on a Debian Lenny implementation, sidux easily loads and outboots anything that I've tried, including antiX, which surprised me greatly.

I was well into using sidux 2009.02 this past week, completely unaware of the political shipwreck that seems to be happening, and I went into the new sidux forum, gushing about the new release and how I picked up the new art just by doing a dist-upgrade. Someone asked me how I did it, and I told them I just did an apt-cache search sidux and scrolled to find the artwork.

slh jumped in, told me my approach was flawed, but never explained himself. I gave an example of what I did and how I did it, then slh came back and started on some off topic tirade about the math of how many sidux packages there are.

At that point, I questioned the credibility of his two responses, then I got jumped on by slam. I keep checking back there, because it's kind of like a "Peyton Place" story, but I still had no idea of the political upheaval going on there.

I checked by today and noticed the smxi threads were moved to "Archive" status and I have to wonder, given what's been going on, how much longer even that will remain true.

All of this is quite disconcerting because sidux has been the most awesome every day system that I have used since the days of the late Libranet, which I loved so much. I guess the upside to all of it is that antiX is morphing, more and more, into the kind of system that I like to use, and with the latest set of tools that are shaping up, if sidux does implode at some point, I am comfortable that I could easily live with my own custom implementation of antiX, and I may just head in that direction anyway to cover my bases. I also always keep a stable implementation (or six) of SimplyMEPIS around. It has served me nearly as long as Libranet, and may outlast yet another system, should things continue to degrade on the sidux front.

I could see myself also using my own custom version of Debian Sid with smxi implemented, because that is how I got into sidux in the first place, so I KNOW it can be done - I was doing it even before h2 added the ton of additional support that he's put into it. I sure hope that smxi lives on, even if some of these other fine Debian based distros don't!
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If anybody is interested, I have just installed an AMD64 Sid via Debian Daily Installer business card.

I was originally going to install Sidux 2009-02 but, after the drama in that back yard, decided on Sid & smxi

I selected ext4 during the install & once the base system was done & booted I set up smxi.

Then installed KDE4 & via smxi, my nvidia driver.

Once I was happy with my set up, installed via smxi & booted the Liquorix Kernel.

The system is fast & stable with all bits I need & want.

straykat
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I recently had similar luck with a mini.iso install of AMD64 sid on this box.

Sid is pretty much a moving target except when pre release freezes are taking place, so the ability to do this really depends on how the stars are aligned on the day (sometimes the hour) that you try it.

IMO if one doesn't mind taking the chance of a failed install it's worth a shot. Generally though I think it is probably better for most people to install testing as a route to a successful sid installation.

I was initially hoping to try AntiX to get me to a near sid install, but it is 32bit only and I need 64bit for some of my stuff. :-(


Marcus
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I'm curious, what apps are a must in 64bit? I have not seen any real advantages(and some disadvantages) to make the switch to 64bit.

AntiX is worth a shot if you can stay with 32bit.
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I would like to know the same thing. For servers, yes, 64 bit systems are definitely worth it, but what, if any, are the advantages of a 64 bit desktop? The advantages of a 32 bit desktop, to me at least, are that there are more of them, providing more choices, and some VERY GOOD choices that work REALLY well with 32 bit environments - antiX is certainly among those fine choices.
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If you have more than 3.2 GB RAM and want to use it. That's the reason I went to 64bit. I have found that particularly helpful in running virtualbox machines when RAM is shared (phot editing workflow).

Otherwise, no benefits and sme problems. I've at least got googleearth back after the ia32-libs fiasco but not acroread that has a dependency still linked to ia32-apt-get
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I have various memory intensive image editing tasks I have to deal with where the AMD64 architecture offers some advantages, but I have to admit the biggest driver in my use of 64bit is the advantage gained in running some BOINC projects.

That aside I think it pretty obvious that the AMD64 architecture and its offshoots are the present and immediate future of desktop computing. Of my commonly used computers only an Intel Atom based netbook is not capable of 64 bit computing.

Other than the netbooks and a few niche gizmos I cannot think of any currently produced Intel or AMD based computers that are not 64bit capable and this has been the case for a number of years. There are diminishing number of legacy 32bit computers in use and 32bit distros are suitable for them and I think continued support is good, but to not use the capability of the modern desktop computer is foolish.

Linux did get the jump over everyone else with the adoption of the AMD64 architecture, but that lead, at least on the desktop, has been hampered by people clinging to i686 or earlier. Linux is community driven and the size of installed base of the various architectures is important in moving forward. It was long ago time to embrace 64bit and move forward.

I've been at this long enough to remember people hanging on to z80, 8088, 286, 386, 486 machines and claiming they were good enough. One has to wonder where they are now, mostly in landfills, museums and piled in basements like mine, I think.


Marcus
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The main problem I've seen with 64 bit has been a very slow development of desktop support. And that's not only non free, it wasn't long ago, if I remember right, where Debian had no OOo support, and flash beta support that's not relying on highly unstable plugin tools has arrived only very recently. For modern desktop use, to not have a well packaged flash utility kind is the end of the story for 64 bit, but this is all changing, albeit very slowly.

I think that end users actually have made a very rational, very correct decision, to not change because there is nothing that 64 bit actually offered as a killer feature that would make such a change worth what have proved to be a consistent series of missing apps and headaches.

The reality of these questions comes down to overall market penetration, and I'd estimate 64 bit linux desktops running at around 0.2% max, probably closer to 0.1% in ongoing real world use. And those numbers just do not appeal much to non free software vendors.

However, every year, more pieces are added to the stack, and 64 bit becomes a bit less impractical, though I have as of yet still seen exactly zero positive reasons to actually switch. That doesn't mean that there aren't reasons for some people in some cases, and in fact, when you look at the roughly 20% or so of people who have switched or installed 64 bit, I'd say, if you exclude the fanboys, who do it simply because 64 is 2x32, there are certainly people out there who are taking advantage of what 64 bit has to offer in positive ways, ie, more ram, larger data chunks to process, and a few other fairly specialized applications, math, science, and increasingly, video processing. But for the rest of the world, Linux, Windows, there has simply been a total absence of positive reason to switch, and that hasn't changed at all.

But in a few more years, intertia will be on the side of 64 bit, and it should become the new defacto standard. Remember, betamax was also a technically superior media, but that didn't help it take the market, people just didn't really care. Other changes show what consumers, end users, actually care about, ie, dvd adoption, hd adoption, blueray adoption, some just spread like wildfire, others never really catch on because the problems they solved or created weren't worth the bother or expense or time.

But I'd say once 8 gig ram becomes the norm, which means some horribly bloated apps and productivity suites, which I'm already starting to see the first warnings of out there, like the new photoshop cs3 type thing, then 64 bit will sort of ooze into standard desktops.

Remember, Windows also has had almost no luck convincing end users to run 64 bit, it's not just a Linux thing, it's the end users actually acting fairly rationally, seeing some issues that make it not worth it.
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On servers, 64 bit systems have been useful, and they have been around since the early nineties. However, many of the early UNIX systems back then did not have a true, end to end, all applications fully recompiled to take complete advantage of those 64 bits for quite some time. I used to work on Digital UNIX, and the brag it had was the first true, end to end 64 bit system - the OS, kernel, applications, and utilities all completely re-engineered and recompiled to fully support the 64 bit address space.

It was not until the Web and large databases started to take off that Digital UNIX also started to take off - and for a few years, it carried Digital until the company sold off to Compaq (and helped sink them).

The truth is that there was not enough demand for true 64 bit capabilities, even in servers, until they became predominantly database engines.

Until desktop suites suck up all available memory and demand 4 GB+ just to work, I think you are right, operating systems using 32 bit address spaces, whether on 32 or 64 bit equipment, will continue to dominate. It won't be much longer, though. I think the 64 bit systems will be the defacto as smart phones and netbooks push up the chain, what remains on laptops and desktops will move to the high end, and it may be sooner rather than later.
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