On Sunday 18 November 2007 12:22, Christopher Sawtell wrote: > OTOH & IMHO, It's nearly always disk and filesystem speed which is the > bottle-neck for day to day computing, thus - unless you are runnimg > heavy-duty number-crunching processes, such as rendering picture > frames - in practice there is very little to be gained from doing the > 64-bit thing. It's just a marketing ploy.
The big advantage of 64 bit is that it can address lots and lots of memory. 32 bit has something like a 4Gb limit. I went from 32 to 64 bit on this machine and found that I had lost apps like dosemu, so after a few months I moved back to 32 bit. I did not notice any change in speed. > > On 11/18/07, Ross Drummond <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 09:13, Phill Coxon wrote: > > > In other words - is there any point in my doing an apt-on-cd backup > > > of all the updates I've installed to Ubuntu 7.10, or will every > > > package have to be downloaded again as a 64bit version anyway? > > > > > > Thanks. > > > > This is not an exact answer to your question. > > > > I recently set up a 64bit computer with Gentoo. Gentoo is source > > based distribution which downloads the source code and compiles the > > applications on > > the computer they are going to be used. This allows applications to > > customised and optimised according to your wishes. > > > > I compiled my applications to run on 64 bit architecture setting one > > of the compiler flags to; > > > > -march=x86-64 > > > > Not one of the GPL applications failed to compile. Some third party > > applications which supply the executable rather than the source code > > require 32bit emulation to run. > > > > Down at the silicon level computing is about manipulating numbers. So > > anything > > which allows these numbers to be processed in 64 as opposed to 32 bit > > chunks has to be a good thing. > > > > My advice is go 64 bit as much as possible. > > > > Cheers Ross Drummond -- Philip Charles; 39a Paterson Street, Abbotsford, Dunedin, New Zealand +64 3 488 2818 Fax +64 3 488 2875 Mobile 027 663 4453 [EMAIL PROTECTED] - personal. [EMAIL PROTECTED] - business
