Linux has been doing 64 bit longer than Windows. They've had time to iron out the bugs a bit better. I've been running 64bit Debian for years now and I've never had trouble with it. And with 6 gigs of memory you're going to need 64 bit to utilize it all.
As for programes, there's the basics, of course. OpenOffice, Gimp, Audacity, Firefox etc. Eclipse for programming. I'd recommend going with evince for PDF viewing personally. Get mplayer for watching movies and mencoder (with an appropriate front end) for converting them. I'm not sure if Ubuntu comes with them or not but you'll want libdvdcss2 (for watching DVDs) and w64codecs (for Windows media format files) to. If you do any video editing get kdenlive. Flash, of course, though you may want to look at gnash instead. The Linux version of Flash is buggy as hell unless they've made some major improvements since the last time I updated. It's been quite a while, so it's possible. Personally I think Ubuntu's strongest point is its package management system. There's nothing quite like having one program that will find, download, and install any program from a list of several thousand in just a couple clicks. Really though it can do anything Windows or Mac can. Heck, you can even do gaming on it now that Valve's released a Linux version of Steam. -----Original Message----- From: Matthew P. Smith [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Thursday, June 10, 2010 10:04 PM To: cf-community Subject: ubuntu - 32 or 64 bit? Just made some space on my main partition for it. Would like to mention how nice it is that windows 7 will now resize a partition without having to buy software. Anyways, do I want 32 or 64 bit for unbutu? Old school windows had issues with getting drivers for 64 bit, not sure how that is in Linux land. I'm running an ati 5770 and have heard that atis driver support is not good, so that's a concern. The site says it recommends 32 bit for everyday use, but I'm rocking win 7 64 and 6 gigs memory. Oh, and, what the heck should I do with Ubuntu now that I have it? I'm just giving it a try for now, what should I explore, try to do, where does it shine, etc? Thanks! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology-Michael-Dinowitz/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:321040 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
