thinking about downgrading to 32 bit...

[mma8x]

actually, everything is working find running 64 bit gutsy...except for the lack of a tickless kernel. i tried installing a patched kernel from another distro (gentoo?), which worked ok, except that i've been unable to get my ipw3945 wireless up and running. i did notice a significant improvement in power consumption with the tickless kernel. sooo....
do i have to do a fresh install from a 32 bit disk, or is there an easier way to downgrade?

[dewey]

If you choose to downgrade, you must reinstall Ubuntu using the 32 bit disc.

If your /home was on a seperate partition, you will be able to keep it.

[tighem]

Even if /home is on the same partition you can copy over to another disk, reinstall, and copy back. Worked great for me when I went from 32 to 64 (and worked pretty well when I put hardy on a separate disk and copied the /home directory over there).

Tickless is going to be available in the 2.6.24 kernel for 64-bit. And Virtualbox absolutely craters under it, so if you can wait or are using VB there is no reason to move.

[mma8x]

yeah, i was using a hacked 2.6.24 kernel (it was actually fedora) to give me tickless. like i said, very nice except for the wireless support. iwl3945 support was compiled as a module in the kernel, but i wasn't able to pull up the interface. sadly, i don't have a separate /home partition (i can never get the sizes right, and always run out of room on an unexpected partition).

maybe i'll go 32 bit until 2.6.24 comes out--i feel like i'll have the same wireless issues until ubuntu supports the new kernel, which may not be for another 6+ months...

[mma8x]

hmm, on second thought...
doing some more testing, it doesn't look like the tickless kernel is giving me any power savings; minimal if so. idling at minimum brightness, i was getting 13.8 W with both, though wakeups from idle were significantly different (~450 v. 120). if there's a difference, i guess it probably isn't worth the hassle. i'll wait for 2.6.24 from ubuntu; i can always get the new kernel from the hardy repos when it comes out.