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> I’m young on this forum, but I’m a long time Linux SysAdmin and
> OpenSource Developer. I used openSUSE for a long time but in the
> last few years, for work needs, have been using Windows and Linux
> only on VMs (as workstation/desktop) and servers (work, without X, of
> course).
It’s never too late to improve… switch back full time and virtualize
that other stuff. 
> I know this is an old question, that 64-bit performs better on apps
> which use more them 4GB of all Memory (RAM, GPU, etc), but there’s
> still one thing that I think it’s unclear, or at least for me. For
> people who have a computer or a laptop, like I do, with an Intel
> i5-2520M and 8GB of RAM, with an Intel HD 3000, which use the
> computer mosty for software development, system administration, watch
> movies and tv shows, listen to music and internet in general and
> maybe one or two older or basic games, is it really needed 64-bit
> version of a Linux Distro, which we know unfortunately has some
> issues and difficulties compared to 32-bit (sometimes are simple
> things, like MTP for navigating smartphones/tablets)?
Like what, specifically? I’ve been running x86_64 for, well, a lot of
years and haven’t hit any compatibility issues in a long, long time.
Running x86_64 does not preclude using x86_32 applications, though most
of the time that (using 32-bit on 64-bit) is not a necessary change to make.
> Or 32-bit with PAE kernel is enough for those situations, even
> though it processes slower memory transactions for big processes?
PAE also doesn’t let you use more memory in those 32-bit processes. If
you want to do something big (like run a large VM, which is just one
reason I use x86_64) you simply cannot give that VM 6 GB of your 8 GB
total if your system is using x86_32 at its base. If you are a
developer and you want to open a large core file with something like
Eclipse Memory Analyzer, and that core file is from a server with 4 GB
RAM, you’ll never get it open unless you can give java (behind Eclipse)
> 4 GB RAM.
At the end of the day PAE is still limiting what an application can do,
and going to x86_64 removes those limits. My personal opinion is that
unless you have a very compelling reason to NOT go to x86_64, make the
change. A very compelling reason is a critical task (application in
your case) that does not work at all. When things were still moving to
x86_64 there were a few of these for sure, but I haven’t seen an offer
for an x86_32 processor in even a home computer for years. It’s been
something like three years since I saw Dell start shipping laptops with
six and eight GB of RAM to home users like it was the normal thing to do
(which blew my mind at the time… I’m getting old apparently).
Good luck.
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