Hi all,
Yesterday was going through acer site for a new laptop.
I saw there, they mention about RAM some thing like:
2GB (For 32bit)
3/4GB (For 64bit)
Some how i know the memory consumption in both 32 and 64 bits.
And the speed issue also.
I am using 32bit till now, haven’t use 64bit.
Want to know more about the OS 32/64 bit and hardware support for it.
I will be thankful, if some one enlighten in detail the main difference between both with the support of hardware.
I have both installed on my system, and frankly, I don’t know where this “speed boost” people are talking about is. Realistically, unless you are doing some heavy video transcoding or large image manipulation, you won’t notice much of a difference other than a few milliseconds here, maybe a few seconds there. Not a big deal for most users.
There are loads of threads discussing this. _64 is well supported in Linux. Better IMO than in windows.
_64 will address your memory to the best advantage of your system.
_64 will perform many tasks more effectively. (eg; video conversions)
However the PAE kernel is designed to address memory 4GB+ on _32. And will do so effectively. This is not available in windows.
Split the difference and go for 48 bits. Hahahaha. lol!
Sorry, just kidding. Seriously both work just fine. I run 64 bit whenever I can because I detest wasting the capability of the hardware. Dangit, I bought 64 bits wide registers and I mean to use them. No lazy CPUs while I’m around. lol!
I would go with 64 bit on a new system simply for the fact its newer and will probably have a longer support lifetime. Eventually you will see 32 bit phased out of the server and desktop markets. That will make it harder to find distros compiled for it. For now though both work fine and will get the job done. The 4GB RAM limit isn’t an issue with the linux pae kernel, but if you want to run windows on that machine too it will be.
Running 64bit on quite a few machines of different configuration. There are some programs still available only in 32bit only but they seamlessly run in 64bit environment too.
So far, never come across any unavailability of drivers.
Thanks guys for all your valuable inputs.
Its now clear, that software and driver is not an issue any more in 64bit, that’s a good move.
If lets say, i want to buy a new laptop, and i want to run 64bit on it, what could be the basic hardware support for it?
and later i want to run 32bit on that laptop, what could be the possible changes there.any data loss?
One more question: does any body notice any speed difference between the two except video rendering. Mean, for programming stuff, software switch behaviour etc…
One thing though, you cannot switch between 32-bit and 64-bit OSes without a reinstall. It’s like a fresh install. So you would have to backup and restore your files if you wanted to switch.
Naturally if you want to run 64-bit you must have a 64-bit capable CPU, one with the AMD64 extensions or what Intel calls Intel 64 (previously called EM64T) after they licensed the technology from AMD. Not all notebooks have such a CPU.
As for the speed and such, this has been discussed to death in forums, so search for some old threads.
Whenever you install, keep /home in a separate partition so that you can install another Linux OS (different versions, distros, arch etc.) without destroying your data in /home.
Until very recently, I’ve always used 32-bit openSUSE on my hardware, mainly because my hardware was so old it only supported 32-bit.
Recently (last Nov) I purchased a Dell laptop that supported 64-bit, but I elected to install 32-bit openSUSE-11.1, mainly because I had a vacation coming up with my wife, and she has no patience for computer problems that might be Linux related (although she has all the time in the world for computer problems that might be MS-Windows related … but thats another story). I had remembered various “horror” stories about users with drivers and multimedia problems (such as flash) with 64-bit, that I elected to go with 32-bit to avoid any possibilities of PC problems when on vacation.
Now we did have problems with our Dell (specifically: WinVista’s wireless refuses to work) but our problems were not Linux related (the openSUSE Linux wireless works ok).
Then back in April this year (2009), I purchased a new desktop (Asus P6T Deluxe v2 with an Intel Core i7 920 CPU), and I decided to install a 64-bit openSUSE on it. The 64-bit has worked great. I have seen no problems that I can attribute to 64-bit.
I use the old smart package manager more than I use zypper, and I recall some users on IRC chat channel were highly critical of Smart because of how it handles 64-bit. Well, I observed NONE of those problems. Makes me think there were highly critical of something I either can not observe, or that their concern is incredibly minor and they totally blew it out of proportion (where blowing minor hiccups out of proportion appears to happen WAY TOO MUCH with Linux devotees - but I diverge).
Anyway, I am beginning to believe that 64-bit has come of age, although for new users I am still recommending they start with 32-bit, mainly because I have not been running 64-bit long enough to have complete confidence.
you don’t have to have complete confidence yourself to recommend 64 bit to newbies. Trust me when I say that I’ve been running 64 bit Linux for ~3 years now and never had any problems with it. Not on the driver side, not on the multimedia/plugins side, nowhere. The only minor problem one could have is with some obscure encoded video files which use weird codecs that only mplayer can handle but only if the win32 DLLs are installed, which also only happen to work on 32-bit machines/OSes. There’s a workaround for this though. Just install/compile 32 bit mplayer and you can use them
PAE is available in Windows OSes, BUT the memory amouont is imited by its architecture (Microsoft didn’t want to listen to complaints and wanted to kep the compatibility as best as they can).
The only difference between a PAE and a 64 bit kernel is that addressing memory above those 4 GB is less efficient that in native 64 bit kernel and also that 64 bit kernel uses those additinal registers and that’s why some encoding etc. is more efficient. Other than that i had no problems with 64 bit install and for some program that work only on 32 bit? You can always install 32 bit libraries
So nowadays i’d go for 64 bit (90% of hardware supports it except some old celerons and durons since you still got that "software compatibility layer introduced with 32 bit libs workng on it)
On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 14:46:01 GMT, CloudLion ca wrote:
> I run 64 bit when and where I can. I’d honestly have to say I’ve had
> less issues with 32 bit Linux.
>
> Is “real” Slackware available in 64 bit yet? If it is then 64 bit
> should be fine.
Because “real” Slackware is the be all/end all of linux, but to answer
you…yes. http://www.slackware.com/ second aricle from 2009-05-19.
Well… the only thing Slackware doesn’t have… is YaST. Oh… and it doesn’t have RPMs. I’m glad we agree that Slackware is about the best you can get without RPMs and YaST.
That is why we have, or had, SuSE… because it was going to bring the quality of Slackware to the reach of the common man, German and non-German speaking; that is.
Too bad Novell can’t buy Slackware. Or… maybe that’s a good thing?
Slackware doesn’t even have a package management system. It just stores files in a *.tgz file. Enjoy living in 1994
also, stop pushing Novell is buying ****ty distros like Mandriva, Slackware, etc. Enough is enough! If Novell wants to buy something, they surely won’t ask you for advice
Really? Who’s spreading rumors around the forum? Dell to buy out Novell, omg… oh no, maybe Intel will do it, etc. Heck Novell should buy this or that… or not.
Also, I don’t drink coffee nor do I eat Swiss chocolate…
