[GLLUG] Ubuntu 32 or 64?

[Frank Dolinar]

I recently moved my main home machine from WinXP Pro 32bit to a dual 
boot Ubuntu 10.04 64bit and WinXP Pro 64bit.
The chip is an AMD Athlon 64, which is so old it only has one CPU core.
In all it works pretty cleanly and even seems to be a bit faster.  If 
that perception is correct, I presume it's because the 64bit OS is more 
efficient in using the chip's resources.

I have found a few programs that don't like the 64bit environment -- 
iTunes being the most significant -- but in general, everything else 
(e.g. Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice) seem to work without complaint.  
I'm still reloading software on the system, so the list is not yet 
exhaustive.

In addition, I was surprised to find how easy it is to use Ubuntu to 
reach onto essentially any disk partition in the system and read from / 
write to that disk.  Most of the partitions in my system are still NTFS 
because I have so much Windows-based software on a large HD.  That will 
change over time, but it was nice to see that getting at all the 
partitions from Ubuntu was so easy and effective.

I thought someone (David) indicated a way to run recalcitrant 32bit 
software on a 64bit OS.  I'd like to hear more.

Eduardo, does Apple have a version of iTunes squirreled away somewhere 
that will run on WinXP Pro 64bit?  What I'm seeing is that the 64bit 
version wants Vista or 7.  I have no real interest in either.  The 32bit 
versions I've tried object to fraternizing with a 64bit OS.

Frank


Eduardo Cesconetto wrote:
> Are all drivers available for modern hardware in 64bit? I could not 
> find a well documented HCL on 10.4...
>
> Eduardo Cesconetto
>
> On Jun 2, 2010, at 10:41 PM, "STeve Andre'" <andres at msu.edu> wrote:
>
>> On Wednesday 02 June 2010 23:29:25 Eduardo Cesconetto wrote:
>>> Just got some cheap hardware(i5 MSI laptop) and getting ready to
>>> remove Window$, should I go for 32 or 64 bit ubuntu?
>>>
>>> Eduardo Cesconetto
>>
>> Judging by the problems a lot of software has running on a sparc 64
>> instead of i386, I would stick with 32 bit stuff for now.  Unless you
>> need (and have more than 3G) more, 64 bits doesn't buy you much.
>> All too often people write software with the "All the world's a 386"
>> mentality, creating problems on big-endian and 64 bit arches.
>>
>> If somone can come up with reasons to go 64 bit I'm all ears.
>>
>> --STeve Andre'
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