Hello,
I’m about to buy a Compaq Presario 5612 with an
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4450E processor.
To run SuSE 11.1, is it recommended to install
the 32- or 64-bit version?
Thanks for a word,
Ake
I would go for 64bit
Geoff
Ditto…
Don’t see any reason to use 32 bits, have 3 out 4 openSUSE systems running 64 bits.
The 32 bit exception is cause the processor is an old Sempron 3000+ that doesn’t support 64 bits 
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64-bit is here. Let’s move away from the old stuff. I run 64-bit at
work, at home, and my wife does on her laptop too (she’s not nerdy).
Been doing it exclusively for a couple years without any issues so far.
Good luck.
Axeia wrote:
> geoffro;1927470 Wrote:
>> I would go for 64bit Ditto…
>
> Don’t see any reason to use 32 bits, have 3 out 4 openSUSE systems
> running 64 bits.
> The 32 bit exception is cause the processor is an old Sempron 3000+
> that doesn’t support 64 bits 
>
>
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Well it’s fine to run 64 bit i agree but seeing that 32-bit version has PAE is better with me. I don’t have to install lots of 32 bit packages if i want to play something or to install something that is only on 32 bit. I’d go on 32 bit unless You edit videos or something like that.
If you have lots of ram go 64 bits otherwise probably best to stay with 32. As 64 bit applications use much more ram then their 32 bit counterparts.
I don’t agree with Your statement that 64 bit apps use more RAM. Show me some comparisons then claim that. 64 bit apps do take a bit more place on disk and a fraction more in RAM.
I was using both 32 & 64 bit versions and i don’t see any difference between them(and i do have 8GB of memory).
Using 64 bit is a bit problematic if You want to install some 32 bit software outside of the suse repositories as most of them are 32 bit (unless You want to compile them :). I’d go 32 bit.
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Also note that a 64-bit system (x86_64, that is) runs 32-bit software
just fine most of the time out of the box, and for things that don’t
work out of the box I have yet to come across something that absolutely
refused to work after adding 32-bit libraries, typically available via Yast.
Good luck.
BenderBendingRodriguez wrote:
> I don’t agree with Your statement that 64 bit apps use more RAM. Show me
> some comparisons then claim that. 64 bit apps do take a bit more place
> on disk and a fraction more in RAM.
>
>
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I bet it does run well (almost natively?) but there is no need to run 64 bit system if You haven’t got more than 4GB of memory as You won’t get any benefits. And i personally don’t like having installed too many packages (like having 32 and 64 bit versions of the same package) just because something is only 32 bit 
So unless You got some reasons to go 64 bit i would stay with 32 bit (NO, 64 bit is not twice as fast as 32 bit :P).
64 bit works great!
I wouldn’t say there are no benefits if you don’t have the memory. You do get a speed up on things like media encoding. I’ve been running 64-bit since 10.1 or so. It was rough in the early days, but now most of the issues are ironed out. Besides I hate wasting the lovely 64-bit CPUs that I have.
For servers it’s nice not to have to worry about not being able to throw more RAM into the server because the silly mobo won’t handle > 4GB due to chipset limitations. I manage a nice set of servers with 8GB each. There’s even less reason to hold back on servers because server software is much less problematic than client software like Flash, etc anyway.
So don’t be a fossil, have a go at 64-bit. Most of the wounds have been suffered by the pioneers anyway.
Aside from the simple math that an integer on a 64 bit machine is twice the size of an integer on a 32 you might find this enlightening:
64-bit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
As to choosing which to install:
Should you choose 32-bit or 64-bit Linux? - Linux Forums
Ubuntu Linux 6.10: 64-Bit vs 32-Bit Benchmark
Myths and facts about 64-bit Linux(®)
http://www.pdc.kth.se/~pek/64vs32bits.txt
Benchmarks: AMD64 in 32bit mode vs 64bit mode (Ubuntu)
Incidentally a lot of the compute speed gain doesn’t come from the size of integers. The majority of integer operations don’t require longlongs. Rather, the 64-bit architecture has more registers and the compiler doesn’t have to generate code to spill registers into memory when registers are in short supply.
Go with the 64 bit.
64bit does not USE but accesses more RAM.
It is stable enough now, and many of the suggested apps requiring 32bit installs have had 64bit counter parts for quite some time now.