I’ve got a new notebook and now I’m wondering if I can beter use 32bit or 64bit
It’s a Aser aspire 7535G.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Processor QL-64 (2.1 GHZ)
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570
4 GB Memory
What can I use best.
Thanks a lot
I am assuming you mean 32 or 64 bit openSUSE? I only use 64bit openSUSE on my Desktop PC. AMD Athlon Dual Core 64bit 4400+, 4GB RAM, Nvidia 8400GS 256MB. It works great for me with my set up.
If you’re into multimedia (encoding/decoding audio/video, editing, etc) and number crunching then definitely go for 64bit.
There was a time when 32-bit was more stable, but I think that time has long since gone.
One of the developers and also one of the packagers (sorry, can’t remember which ones) noted most of them now run PCs with 64-bit openSUSE installs as their main boot partition. Hence it stands to reason that there will come a time when 64-bit is more stable, and that time may be here now.
On my laptop I had a dual boot of both 32bit and 64bit openSUSE just after I bought it (2,5 years ago). The 64bit was remarkably faster, in booting, starting and running programs. So I ditched the 32bit install.
In my experience the 64bit does not only run faster on AMD’s, on 64bit Intels it’s the same: faster, very stable.
Also
Those are interesting comments. Out of habit or playing safe, I am still on 32bit for openSUSE, but it seems I should move to 64bit (at least for 11.2 GA).
On the subject of multimedia, what’s the current situation (for 11.1) on codec support, and Flash 64bit these days. Are there any outstanding issues to workaround?
Multimedia & codecs: any available for 32bit is also available for 64bit. Packman does a great job here.
Flashplayer: I’ve never had a better flashplayer (neither 32bit nor 64bit) than latest flashplayer 10 64bit. Even the alpha’s did better than ever.
Mind, I don’t deny there can be issues. My son wanted to run some crystalspace games. No go. Then again the games were in alpha, early beta stage. But that’s about it.
The real difference indeed is, when you use programs like KDEnlive; rendering of video’s goes approx twice as fast.
A small addition: it’s already been mentioned elsewhere, Packman has started providing packages for Factory/11.2 . As Pascal Bleser posted for now it’s mainly the codecs.
Knurpht, thanks for those posts, all three are very encouraging, and games are not an issue for me.
It works without a problem for me, including 64bit Flash. I’ve been running 64bit only for the past two years and have yet to encounter multimedia problems. Of course, it the past I had to run 32bit browser if I wanted to have flash support, but this is not longer the case. Note that there are still a few rare codecs which may not work on 64bit due to needing in mplayer a windows codec pack which only works under 32bit, but these “rare” codecs are luckily not so common. I’ve only encountered it once, on the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics (Public Lectures) where they encode their audio in WMA speech codec that needs in mplayer a windows DLL. Luckily, they also provide (most of the time, not always) normal flash so I get that.
Also, since I do lots of encoding with x264 and mencoder, I’ve seen speed ups up to 20% compared to the exact same test on the exact same machine with exact same settings and encoders but ran in 32bit mode
Thanks microchip, that’s also encouraging and makes the feedback on 64bit pretty comprehensive. Seems like I’ve been sleeping on 32bit, way too long.
Note that some stuff may still not work or at least give you a hard time in configuring it. Example: wireless where it depends on ndiswrapper and friends, though I’m not sure what’s the situation currently so can’t comment much on it (I don’t use wireless)
Oops, I meant to say “the feedback on 64bit multimedia pretty comprehensive.”
Well spotted, so if there are any more like that (wireless) needing workarounds, keep on posting them here.
I know what I’m going to do. It sounds that 64bit is a lot faster and it is very stable to. So I think i’m going to install the 64. I like to play whit photo, video etc. So hopefully it works very wel.
Thanks for al the reply’s.
but on the flip side - check it works with your graphics first. If you’re having trouble with XORG for a RADEONHD chipset like I am - then it might not work out of box.
good luck.
Checking with a liveCD is a good idea, but that only shows the Frame Buffer, or Vesa, or ATI openGL driver work. It does not show the ATI proprietary driver works. Many radeonhd work fine with 11.1. My Dell Studio 1537 laptop has a radeon 3450 HD and it works fine. … al1ster, perhaps you could be more specific as to your problem.
Could you also update the HCL for your problem, as I do not see any radeonhd problem noted there that would support that general radeonhd caution (rather I see the contrary in the HCL): HCL/ATI Video Cards - openSUSE
The install was fine and worked good, but then I started up for the first time. That was some bad luck. My screen was smaller Two black balks at each side of the screen. That was easy to help out.
Then the update. Need the new things to run and not the old ones. So looked up the repostories whit yast and put them in and lets update my computer.
And now I got only the command line left or windows vista (what start good whit out any changes.
So now I need to recover it and try again.