64 bit or 32 bit

I'm going to try linux (ubuntu) for the first time and was wondering what the support for 64 bit is like, drivers etc. I've got vista 64 bit, no issues with drivers there.

What would be best, 32 or 64????

cheers

 

If you have to ask, 32 bit.
64 bit is fine, it just has issues sometimes, albeit rarely.

 

If you need the extra ram get a 64 bit. If 3.5GB is all you need get the 32.

 

If you can use 64 bit Vista with no problems then 64 bit Linux distros should be fine.

-J.B.

 

Everything open source should work pretty well, but don't expect any closed source apps to be compiled for 64 bit. If you need one, check first.

Being your first Linux experience, start with 32 bit. There's less likelihood for problems.

 

I'd go with 32 bit now. I have a friend that is using 64 bit and he runs into issues every now and then and doesn't have as great of an experience as he could with 32 bit. If you need more memory support you can use a big mem kernel.

 

I agree. 32 is the safest bet. You won't be getting *that* much faster speeds if you're just doing web surfing, music and text documents, etc.

 

I am using 64 bit on my laptop but 32 bit on the desktop. 64 bit is mostly ok. The things that have required more work to get working are the flash plugin, nvidia drivers and codecs. With some research these things will work as well, but not as easily as with 32 bit.

 

I see no reason for using 32 bit if the machine has 2 GB ram or more.
64 bit brings slightly increased performance - on those i386 debian derivates (like ubuntu) not only slightly but moderately increased performance - and hs almost no disatvantages.
Ok, there's some crappy proprietary software that comes only in 32 bit (like Flash), but even that runs out of the box.

I'm using 64 bit linux only for over 4 years and never had a reason to switch to 32 bit.

It seems that many people had bad experiences with 64 bit windows, but you won't have them with linux and free software, I promise.

FYI: Ubuntu 32 bit is optimized for 80386 processors, so there really is a difference in performance.
Most 32 bit binary crap (Flash, Acrobat) works without problems, all drivers work (even the crappy binary ones like nvidia), and you don't have to worry about codecs, because ffmpeg knows them all (hardly any reason to use win32codecs anymore).

 

What's the 80386 processor?

 

The 80386 is the very first 32-bit processor designed by Intel, it came out in 1985. Every x86-based 32-bit processor is backwards compatible to the 80386, that's why the 32-bit based distros are often called i386.

32-bit Arch Linux is somehow special, because it is optimized for the Pentium Pro (aka i686), the unsuccessful precedessor of the Pentium II - which certainly means a bit more than compiling stuff with MMX support. This is also the reason why Arch won't run on 486 or Pentium I.

 

Oh, wow. You learn something new everyday. What was wrong with Pentium Pro?

What about 64-bit OSs? Does the x86_64 title mean that they aren't 'actual' 64bit but just (don't really know the jargon) "emulated"?

 

It usually is called 386, or i386 (for intel), was the predecessor of the 80486 which is the predecessor of the famous Intel Pentium.

All this CPUs are downwards compatible, means any application created for a 80386 will run on a modern Core2 and so on. However, applications compiled and optimized for Core2 CPUs won't run on 80386 processors, nor will they on Pentium 3 CPUs.

This also means, that modern i386 linux distributions have almost no optimizations for the new CPUs, which can really cost performance in some cases. Some distributors deliver special packages like media players that are optimized for a certain CPU generation, so the performance won't be that bad.

And yeah, Hagbard is right about Arch.
It's kind of sad that not more distributors go for i686, because most of their distros won't even run proper on lower performance PCs.

I can really recommend to go for amd64 (64 bit) if there's no specific reason not to.

Nothings wrong with Pentium Pro, just the name is kind of confusing, because it's not fully compatible with the original Pentium, it's more a successor, like the Pentium II.

x86_64 is only a title describing the amd64 technology, invented by AMD for their Athlon64 series, and used by Intel in all current CPUs (Intel call's it Intel64). Because amd64 confused some Intel users ("why do I have to use amd64, even if I have an Intel!?") the name x86_64 was invented, to have neutral name for the amd64 technology that shows, that it's not only 64 bit, but also x86 compatible.
This CPUs can run 32 bit AND 64 bit software native, means without emulation, what's the great thing about amd64.

 

Ahhh.. That clears things up greatly. So I'm actually really under using my CPUs, then? Poor things.. I'll give this x86_64 another go, then.

 

Cheers for the advice. I havn't installed yet. Just been doing a little looking up.

I said in my first post i'm going to install ubuntu, but i've been looking at mandriva aswell, not sure which one to go for. I'm a complete linux noob, would this be a bad mistake or would this be good for a beginner aswell.

 

This really depends on personal taste, but I'd stay with the stronger community supported distros like Fedora 9, Ubuntu 8.04, and so on for beginners.
If you like it, you'll stay some month and start looking for distributions that fit your personal needs more and probably find the perfect operating system for you.

 

Aye. And over time, hopefully, you may join the honourable ranks of us Archies.

But, yes, as thomasg_gpm said, start with a popular distro with a big community base (I started with Ubuntu). If you have any problems, it's easier to find help and there's more helpful links from google.

 

Ok thanks. I'm gonna go with fedora 9, downloading the live cd as we speak.

 

Have fun! I've never used Fedora 9, though. Tell us how you think after your install.

 

Will do

 

t h i r t y t w o

 

And your reasoning is...?

 

32 man... 32 that's all you ever need to know.

 

I thought the answer was 42?

 

It is, just subtract ten and you get a slightly better answer.

 

If I told ya, I'd have to kill ya.....lol.

 

Oh no! (It's amazing how fast a thread can go off-topic)

 

Main issues with 64bit Linux: Flash, and Java plugins. And Flash works decently on 64bit Ubuntu from the repos, and Java will work if you use Konqueror (it uses Java plugins differently). That's about it. I run 64bit Linux on both my work laptop and my personal laptop, and they both run perfectly. Better than fine, considering I have 4GB of RAM The nice thing about 64bit Linux is that it runs 32bit apps and such seamlessly... I play Diablo II all the time under Linux with wine.

You can use PAE to use all 4GB of RAM under a 32bit system, but that actually incurs a penalty of one clock cycle for EVERY memory access because it needs to use the paging table. If you have 4GB of RAM, don't even consider 32 bits if your CPU is 64bit.

The other issue is that many 32bit distros are compiled only with i386 optimizations, which means the kernel and apps are not taking advantage of things like SSE and 3DNow! or newer instructions for the processor. Ubuntu 8.04 and later are optimized for i686 (the issue doesn't happen with x86_64), so that's not much to worry about. But it's something to be aware of with other distros.

 

But all 64bit distros take advantage of the newer tech in the cpus, right?

 

Some see it an issue, I see it an advantage.
Those crap (and this term is actually too good to use it, I just have nothing better in mind at this time) is running on 64 bit just fine, abstracted by nspluginwrapper.
The advantage: if the proprietary garbage crashes, it will only drag under the nspluginwrapper, not the whole browser, like it would on 32 bit (well, I have to admit, that nspluinwrapper is probably going to replace the common nsplugin API even on 32 bit systems in the future).

 

anybody know of a good site that lists major manufacturers that do/do not produce 64 bit versions of there software. knowing how much software is actually out there would be a great help in deciding whether to use a 64 bit O/S or stick with 32

 

It's quite safe, actually. As far as I know, only Flash and Java have problems.

 

I'm going soon to x64 Linux.

I have some problems with x64 Fedora 10 (beta, snap 2, downloading snap 3 now) and I consider installing Linux Mint 5 Elyssa x64.

There are distros with i586 and i686 support, not just Arch .

 

Those that haven't use 64-bit will recommend 32-bit, those that use 64-bit will recommend 64-bit because they know that there is almost no difference between them in Linux except for the advantages, there are very few open source apps not available for 64-bit, and for those that aren't they can still run perfectly fine using lib32. Go 64-bit.