Hi
Recently, a friend installed a x32 version of OS 13.1 in a i7 8Gb laptop computer. Apparently, it have 8Gb disposable for the operating system (Kinfo says), but I don’t think so, obviosly. So my question is, could we update from x32 to x64 as when we update from a older version to a newer, using “Update” option from install DVD?
Thank you
Why do you think so, and why obviously?
openSUSE (or Linux in general) uses the CPU’s PAE feature (unless you are using kernel-default on openSUSE), and therefore supports more than 4 GiB (upto a maximum of 64 GB) even on 32bit systems.
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Address_Extension
So my question is, could we update from x32 to x64 as when we update from a older version to a newer, using “Update” option from install DVD?
Should be possible, yes. But I never tried it myself.
It should even work if you “upgrade” to the same version.
But you have to download the 64bit installation DVD of course.
A word of warning: You should not even try to switch architectures with the online upgrade method! (i.e. YaST or “zypper dup”)
This won’t work!
I tried this once, and it took me hours to clean up the mess… 
Your explanation is crystal clear. My fault. I didn’t even wonder about how PAE worked and what was for.
Cause I installed to that laptop applications that was not in OpenSUSE repos (Chrome, Teamviewer and others) that should be downloaded and installed again on x86-64 versions, I’ll wait to OpenSUSE next release, and I will do an upgrade (“Update” option) from the DVD 13.2 x86-64 and then reinstall those applications. Knowing the fact that whole 8Gb of RAM are accesible, is not urgent to change software architecture.
Thank you a lot for your quick and understable explanation