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Rhakios · Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 5:59 pm Post subject: 32-bit or 64-bit

Having been an early adopter of 64-bit, I tended to get a little tired of those people who liked to tell that there's no real benefit to 64-bit and I might as well run a 32-bit distro on the machine anyway as it only makes a difference if one uses more that 4GB of ram.
So, I was rather interested in reading this article on the Phoronix website comparing 32-bit, 32-bit PAE and 64-bit kernels on a machine with only 4GB of ram.
As you can see, except for gaming, the benefits of using 64-bit are quite considerable.
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wyliecoyoteuk · Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 10:48 pm Post subject:

Been running 64bit for years, no issues.
Then again, I don't play games!
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LeeNukes · Posted: Wed Dec 30, 2009 11:09 pm Post subject:

I moved to 64bit with my last upgrade. Glad to see it comes out on top. Will always try and use 64bit for servers if I have the option after looking at the apache tests etc.
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Rhakios · Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:28 am Post subject:

sentient_one · LXF regular Joined: Fri Mar 16, 2007 6:51 am Posts: 103

Then again, a little extra speed, here and there, isn't everything
Whereas working well is good at hair retention level
Just about everything supports 32-bit

The change from 16 bit to 32 bit seemed swift and universal
32 bit aint broke so why . . .

Rhakios · Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 9:31 am Post subject:

Then again, some distros managed to provide 32 to 64 compatibility quite early on, so few if any problems resulted. I can only assume that those who have been tearing their hair out over 64-bit must either be using very specific software, or distros that didn't manage compatibility very well.
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nelz · Posted: Thu Dec 31, 2009 12:04 pm Post subject:

Indeed, even binary, non-free, 32 bit software - like flashplayer or vmware, have worked reliably for years with a 64 bit distro and the 32 bit compatibility libraries.
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ollie · Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 4:44 am Post subject: Re: 32 bit aint broke

Rhakios · Posted: Fri Jan 01, 2010 2:03 pm Post subject: Re: 32 bit aint broke

ollie · Posted: Sat Jan 02, 2010 1:04 am Post subject: Re: 32 bit aint broke

nordle · LXF regular Joined: Fri Apr 08, 2005 10:56 pm Posts: 1497

Having just gone from using mencoder under Slackware 12.2 to Xubuntu 9.10 and getting 30% slower fps, it does depend on multiple factors, kernel, compiler+flags, libs etc

Somewhere on this forum, pre-2005 days, I did a test using the same nvidia driver and again, I got much better fps under Slackware even though it was the same binary driver.

EDIT:
But, I think I then repeated the test with OpenSUSE and got even better fps result under glx-gears
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jamie_tickner · Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 8:39 pm Post subject:

I used to use 64bit but had trouble getting flash, skype and some other stuff to work properly so I went back to 32bit. Now my previous errors have been addressed so I am back to 64bit.

Grimnir512 · Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 8:48 pm Post subject:

I've been using 64-bit since I upgraded to Karmic. I've had no problems at all apart from with Flash as detailed below.

LeeNukes · Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 9:09 pm Post subject:

paulm · Posted: Sun Jan 03, 2010 10:29 pm Post subject:

Having finally managed to take a couple of blank CDs to work with me, I'm now running Salix in 64-bit. Very impressive. The 32-bit version was substantially faster than most other 32-bit distros, and the 64-bit flies compared to it. I've not seen any compatibility problems -so far, everything I've tried works.

The most impressive thing was compiling - I built Osmo under the 32-bit version, timed. I've just done the same under the 64-bit version - around 40 % faster. Generating the dep list (always a pain under the 32-bit version) was stunningly fast.

Looks like I'm going to be going fully 64-bit soon....

paul.