On Wed, Aug 22, 2007 at 11:44:11AM -0400, Vince Weaver wrote: >> Unless you've got some sort of compelling reason to run a 64-bit OS, I'd >> stick with 32-bit. I've heard most of the compat issues have been ironed >> out, but I always seem to hear about something or the other not working. > > Like what?
> It is true that if you use binary drivers (like nvidia, nidswrapper, etc), > want to run proprietary plugins (like the flash plugin) or run other > proprietary software you might have issues. If you tend to run mostly free > software you should be fine. It really was this series of hassles that stopped me... it's hard to find a free flash plugin :-) I had a devil of a time trying to get flash to work with a 32bit chrooted environment, along with some other random things that I'm forgetting because I ended up reinstalling 32bit just to dodge these problems. > If you have >860MB of RAM you should run 64-bit just because you will get a > performance boost. Is this really true? I would imagine it's definitely true for ram > 2GB, because the linux mem model (IIRC) splits user and kernel mem into 2GB halves, but I don't know where the 860MB number comes from. 860 == 1101011100 in binary, so there's no clear boundary there... The bottom line for me is that I run a 64bit installation for the machine that I use for my research where the vast majority of the apps I run on the machine are ones I wrote that I know are 64bit safe, b/c I wrote them that way. For my personal desktop, it's an entirely different story, so I run 32bit on an althlon64. </data point> - Rob .
