Filed under Desktop | by Samuel Huckins | Date Posted: September 26, 2009 - 9:39 PM

I recently had occasion to upgrade one of my home PCs. I went with a Core 2 Duo for the processor, and decided to give 64-bit Ubuntu (9.04, Jaunty Jackelope) a shot. I found it quite easy, with only a few adjustments needed to my usual system setup steps. General recommendations aside, I wanted to share a few particular application notes I found useful.

Adobe Air: I love Pandora One, TweetDeck, and a number of other Air applications, so getting this working on 64-bit was a requirement. While there aren’t any 64-bit packages for Air on Linux, the 32-bit version works just fine. I was a bit dismayed when I saw the lengthy instructions Adobe has listed for this process, but I must admit they did work perfectly. So grab the eyedrops and hit up this page. Be sure to follow the step at the end for 9.04, otherwise the Air apps won’t be able to connect to the internet on a 64-bit system.
Pandora One: You have to subscribe to get access to Pandora One, but rest assured it works just fine on 64-bit Ubuntu.
Java: This used to present some complications for Ubuntu users, but following this guide I had things running in no time.
Flash: All I needed to run was “sudo apt-get install flashplugin-nonfree”. Flash in Firefox worked perfectly.
TweetDeck: TweetDeck is a great application to keep better track of your Twitter feed. v0.30.5 works just fine on 64-bit Jaunty.

While the benefits of running a 64-bit OS aren’t as substantial for most desktop tasks, there is still a performance boost across the board. And at least for the applications I love and use everyday, the packages are definitely at a stable state for running under 64-bit.

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