As most of you know, I went ahead and installed Ubuntu on my AMD dual core machine. Now the question arises: Should I install the 64 bit version and take advantage of all 4 gigs of RAM, or should I just cruise with the 32 bit version for a while? Inquiring minds want to know....
This thread should help: How many people actually take advantage of their 64bit processor?
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what are you doing with the computer? if you are encoding video with ffmpeg or running cedgea (hard core gaming) than the 64-bit maybe a good idea but for most people it makes little difference. I like the 32-bit versions better most of the time. the packages for i386 seem more stable to me. I don't know why.
Nearly a year and a half after posting this question, I think that I have gotten my answer. I picked up the Linux Pro magazine Ubuntu special edition, and just for yuks installed the 64 bit version. (For evaluation, don't you know Heavily script dependent applications like google mail load a whole lot faster than they do on the 32 bit version of Ubuntu 8.04.
I recently found a review comparing Ubuntu, Vista and Windows 7 to reach other. One of the cool things they did was compare the x86 (32-bit) to the x86_64 (64-bit) versions. http://www.tuxradar.com/node/33 I know this is kind of late to be posting this, but for anyone looking for info about 64-bit vs. 32-bit it may help the decision process.
Scott
honestly from personal experience, i never noticed a performance boost with x64 releases. However what bothered me that my x64 bit installation(s) of 9.04 crashed every single time after installing new packages/updates. It could be a hardware compatibility problem, but I should mention that I have been using the 32 bit releases and i never faced that particular problem . . . For now i advise you to stick to 32-bit releases, you wont be using the 4 GB RAM anyways (most probably), and it'll saves you the painful efforts of finding some nasty hardware drivers (like me web cam for example) - which u can always compile from scratch if u want -.
The reason I want to stick with 32bit (and use PAE) is that about a year ago, I tried the 64bit and the 64bit took more memory than the 32bit. Now the Lucid Alpha3 (dist-upgraded daily) on my C2D T6570 4GB took 42 secs to boot and I was advised to switch to 64bit. Let's see if the 64bit gives me any performance wow in the next few days.
I've always used crappy hardware. Recently I got a PowerEdge T110 QuadCore Intel Xeon installed 64bit. Haven't had any problems (touches head). In theory - I should have downloaded the intel compiler (or is that bad?) to get the optimisations and compiled everything from scratch. Its so fast anyway and considering I used to watch stuff scroll by compiling gentoo for what felt like days (because it was) - its hardly worth the effort - kudos to the devs for a great generic 64bit package therefore. Perhaps I'd have been just as happy with the 32bit. I haven't done any video editing -yet. PRO: Apps open like they were just minimized. CON: At work everything feels even slower now.
Last edited by hollerith; March 30th, 2010 at 10:09 PM. Reason: removed implied profanity
If you have > 3GB of RAM, unless you have a specialized hardware for 32 bit, that can addresses more than 3GB (a physical limitation for the i386 architecture, actually if you're lucky you might get between 3.2 and 3.7 GB), then you MUST go with the 64 bit version, otherwise you will be wasting your memory. I you only have 2GB, I recommend you install 32 bit version, 64 bit will be much slower (because of several technical reasons about 64 bit architecture).
http://www.linux.org.py
My system recognizes 3.7 GB of my 4GB of ram, to me thats good enough, of course i havent tried the 64 bit version to compare speeds.
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