Netbook, i368 or AMD64?

**polyprobatos** · October 16th, 2016

In about a week and a half, I'm going on an extended vacation, and need a (physically) lightweight piece of hardware that can do two basic things:

browse the internet comfortably on wifi
connect to Skype/Viber/some other VoiP program reliably

So, I figured I'd dust of my old netbooks, and see if I can get one of them to do just that. They're Asus X101H EEE PC's, sporting an Intel Atom N570 1.66 Ghz CPU (which is 64-bit capable), and 1 Gb of RAM.

I've tried running Lubuntu from a Live "disk", or rather Live SD-card, and it's running like a charm, without any driver conflicts. The only thing I have found difficult to decide on is which version of the distro to install. With the Live "disks", I observed no noticeable performance difference between i368 and AMD64. The CPU is 64-bit capable, but the RAM is rather on the low side, and non of the applications I plan on running demand either infrastructure per se. It all comes down to overall performance. Hence I was wondering whether anyone on this forum might have some advice to share on this.

Thanking you in advance,

**ajgreeny** · October 16th, 2016

Normally I would say go for a 64 bit OS if you have 64 bit capable hardware but in this case, with only 1GB ram, I am tempted to suggest you stay with the 32 bit OS as a 32 bit system will use slightly lower ram levels for any specific action than a 64 bit system.

The difference is very small, however, so there is no great problem if running a 64 bit system either. For any hardware with 2GB ram or more I would certainly choose 64 bit.

**QLee** · October 16th, 2016

Originally Posted by polyprobatos

They're Asus X101H EEE PC's, sporting an Intel Atom N570 1.66 Ghz CPU (which is 64-bit capable), and 1 Gb of RAM.

I have a netbook with those specs running Ubuntu 14.04 i386 and it performs well for Internet surfing though a bit slow booting. It sure is easier to carry around than a larger laptop and not so much loss if someone steals it. I haven't tried Skype, might depend a little on if you can find a reasonably fast connection in the locations you visit. I haven't yet tried to upgrade it to a 16.04 version. Your thought of using Lubuntu is probably a good idea because of its lower use of resources.

**polyprobatos** · October 17th, 2016

Originally Posted by ajgreeny

Normally I would say go for a 64 bit OS if you have 64 bit capable hardware but in this case, with only 1GB ram, I am tempted to suggest you stay with the 32 bit OS as a 32 bit system will use slightly lower ram levels for any specific action than a 64 bit system.

The difference is very small, however, so there is no great problem if running a 64 bit system either. For any hardware with 2GB ram or more I would certainly choose 64 bit.

Hmmm,.. the real question then ofcourse is whether video-call programs like Viber etc. are more RAM heavy or CPU heavy.

If the difference is small regardless though, I might just go with 64-bit.

**ajgreeny** · October 17th, 2016

No idea about viber, I'm afraid so I can't really comment on that.

However, I suspect you will be somewhat disappointed if you try to run anything that has high CPU or RAM needs on that machine.

**QLee** · October 17th, 2016

If yours is similar to mine, on the bottom is a port where you could upgrade your RAM to 2GB. I plan to do that to mine before I try the upgrade to 16.04.

Shouldn't be that expensive at this point in time and then I suspect that you would have sufficient RAM for your "traveling system" if shortage is what you find now.