64-Bit Upgrade By Way of Open Source Isn’t Bump-Free

“My fellow Labs analyst Andrew Garcia has chronicled his Windows
7 64-bit migration woes—a tale that led me to consider the
bumps I’ve encountered on my own road to 64-bit on the Ubuntu Linux
machines I run at home and work.

“The issues that bedeviled Andrew—missing drivers and a
32-bit only Cisco VPN client—weren’t a problem for me, due
largely to the fact that Linux-based operating systems tend to
insulate users from a lot of the OS, driver and application
integration work required to run a Windows machine.

“All of the drivers I need for my machines either come bundled
with the Ubuntu install disk or sit waiting to be fetched and
installed from Ubuntu’s networked software repositories. Most of
these drivers are maintained within the Linux kernel
project—an organizational structure that’s helped to smooth
the 64-bit migration path.”

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