I recently upgraded my processor to a Core 2 Quad 2.4. I want to format my current system which is running openSUSE 11.3 32 bit. Then I want to installe openSUSE 11.4 afresh. Would it be a good idea to have the 64bit version of openSUSE running on my home system? I use my home system for general use, watching DVD’s, some office work and listening to music and rip a DVD every now and then. I install the software that I need from Packman.
So will it be a good idea to switch over to 64bit?
Operating system based on CPU’s architecture. I do not know if this processor is 32bit or 64bit, because I use only AMD processors.
Could you open your terminal and write this?
IMHO we have reached the state where 64-bit is supported the same as 32-bit, and where there are differences in support, most (not all) of the time 64-bit has superior support to 32-bit.
For video rendering, 64-bit is superior (faster).
Most of the developers and packagers of Linux software only have 64-bit PCs, so the support for 32-bit is less and less all the time. Recently there was a problem with the openSUSE/KDE/nVidia-proprietary driver that ONLY impacted 32-bit users and not 64-bit users.
The cases where I know that 32-bit has marginally better support is ‘flash video’ (although with the appropriate accompanying apps one can run the 32-bit on a 64-bit system), “wine” (where again one can run the 32-bit on a 64-bit system), and ‘skype’ (again WITH the correct libraries one can run the 32-bit on a 64-bit system).
I switched to 64-bit (on my PCs capable of 64-bit: Dell Studio 1537 laptop with Core2Duo (P8400 CPU); Intel Core i7 920 (quad core), My wife’s Intel Core i7 875 (quad core), My mother’s HP desktop (quad core - I can’t remember CPU). I have no complaints wrt 64-bit on openSUSE-11.3 (which is installed on all of these PCs). It works well.
My experience with openSUSE-11.4 in test partitions it also works equally well as 11.3 (on the hardware in which I have installed 11.4).
You should complain to your mother that you were not born earlier, then you could have had AMD since 1982 when they became the second source of the 8086 family of CPUs.
On 2011-04-21 13:06, oldcpu wrote:
> IMHO we have reached the state where 64-bit is supported the same as
> 32-bit, and where there are differences in support, most (not all) of
> the time 64-bit has superior support to 32-bit.
Except proprietary software. Flash, acrobat, some video codecs, etc, are 32
bit only.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
On 2011-04-21 12:36, henkasdf wrote:
>
> Hi Everyone,
>
> I recently upgraded my processor to a Core 2 Quad 2.4. I want to
> format my current system which is running openSUSE 11.3 32 bit. Then I
> want to installe openSUSE 11.4 afresh. Would it be a good idea to have
> the 64bit version of openSUSE running on my home system?
Why not?
Unless your memory is scarce, 64 bit software can use way more ram, unless
well developed⁽¹⁾
> So will it be a good idea to switch over to 64bit?
Try it
If you have the disk space, don’t format your old system, but install
another partition with 11.4 64 bit. Have both. Then find out how your
typical apps behave.
(1) If you don’t believe me, there was a thread in the programming forum
about a program that was twice as slow when compiled for 64 bits. The real
reason was not found out.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
