[undead]

None of this will be necessary for ioquake3 (iourbanterror)!  I'm a QA tester and I compile 64-bit ioquake3 and it runs great.  Sound works fine out of the box with ALSA.

These are the steps I used to run Quake3 on my 64-bit pure desktop.  I will definitely be switching to ioquake3 (iourbanterror) any time I can.  But as long as there are PB enabled servers or leagues that demand PB instead of BE, I'll continue using id software's engine.

Also note, it's possible to setup a 32-bit chroot as well.  I chose this method because I only have one 32-bit application.  If you want to go that route, there are several great tutorials on that.

I'm running 64-bit Debian in a mixed testing/unstable environment (very few unstable).  Quake3 is naturally 32-bit linked so it won't run properly by default on your 64-bit system.  If you try to run it, it will complain about not being able to find the file.  It's actually complaining about not finding ld.so for 32-bit.

Before you begin, I assume you have a properly setup 64-bit system.  You have Nvidia or ATI drivers properly installed and can run 64-bit games at full hardware acceleration.

I can only talk about Nvidia since I've never owned an ATI card.  On Debian it is very easy to do this.  Execute 'm-a' and do prepare (to setup /usr/src), then update to get the current list of modules, then select nvidia and build it.  Once it is done compiling, click install and it will install the module for your running kernel.

Next update your /etc/modules to contain 'nvidia' so it is loaded at boot.  Then configure your X.org config to use the 'nvidia' module.  That's it.

The process for running Quake3 is simple:

• Install the package "ia32-libs" which will install these dependencies for people not on Debian:
  Depends: lsb-release, lib32gcc1, libc6-i386 (>= 2.3.6-2), lib32z1, lib32stdc++6, lib32asound2, lib32ncurses5
  
• If you use Nvidia, install nvidia-glx-ia32
  
• Run a script for the antiquated OSS support in quake3

If you don't install the nvidia-glx-ia32 package, then you will get horrible FPS.  I found this out the hard way.  I was getting 25-90 FPS on my dual core system because it was software rendering (mesa).  I had the nvidia library setup for 64-bit which worked great in ioquake3 with a solid 100 FPS.  After I installed nvidia-glx-ia32, I get a solid 100 FPS in idsoftware's quake3 engine as well.  I cap my FPS at 100 and I'm sure it would be much higher if I didn't.

If you don't run the script and use ALSA (everyone should use ALSA over OSS by now), it will complain about mmapping /dev/dsp.  Here's my script which also allows TS2 to work when I ran a 32-bit system.

#!/bin/sh

# Fail on first error
set -e

echo "Setting up proc entries: "
for i in quake3.x86 ioUrbanTerror.x86_64; do
  echo -e "t$i"
  # Enabling direct playback
  echo "$i 0 0 direct" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/oss

  # Disable capturing
  echo "$i 0 0 disable" > /proc/asound/card0/pcm0c/oss
done

I haven't tried out TS2 yet in 64-bit Linux but I know it will require these 32-bit compatibility libraries.  They say TS3 will support native 64-bit binaries.  TS2 is evidently coded in Delphi which doesn't have a 64-bit compiler for Linux.

[MrBecks (old)]

Somehow I don't see an advantage of using an 64bit CPU...there're just a few applications who support native use of 64bit.

Correct me if I am wrong

[Woekele]

lol. 64bits applications/os'es just run faster on a machine that supports it. That's advantage enough for me. Just most programs do not support it indeed, but that might change now that Intel finally supports the same instruction set too (I think?).

[MrBecks (old)]

yeah it will change ofc...but it's like with vista, still not ready and too many stuff isn't working

I didn't say 64 bit is bad, mkay 

[undead]

Quote

yeah it will change ofc...but it's like with vista, still not ready and too many stuff isn't working

There are very few things that don't work.  I used to run a debian i386 system and I have access to almost all of the same packages in the amd64 branch.

There are very few open source programs that are 32-bit only.  Or at least ones worth running.  Edit: I just checked and even OpenOffice.org has a native amd64 package.  I think it's really only a problem with proprietary code.

Back when amd64 wasn't an official branch of Debian, I would agree with you.  Now though, that's not a real reason unless you have to use proprietary software.

[MrBecks (old)]

you could be right

[Jagged (old)]

Just thought I'd pass along some information from my own experiences.

This seems to be more of a soundcard driver issue than anything.. I have a TurtleBeach Santa Cruz that works fine w/out making any changes to my Linux FC6 x86_64 installation. However, I also have an onboard audio card that uses the snd_intel8x0 driver, that will completely hang Quake3 (and my X session usually) if I try the suggestion mentioned above.

Another option is to try artsdsp -m quake3.x86, but this tends to result in laggy sound.