Hi, I just got a new eMachanine e525 and it came with windows 7 64 bit. I want to know if should I put a 64 bit or 32 bit distribution on it. what are the pros and cons of each. Also, I would like to know what distribution you would put on it.

The specs are:
CPU: Intel Celeron 900 2.2GHz
Mem: 2GB of RAM
HDD: 230GB


THANKS


PS - I know that eMachines are considdered crap but it is what my budget allowed now it is time to put Linux on it and bring out the very best in this cheep hardware.

Seeing it is a new Machine. You can make a live USB Using Unetbootin for Windows and download and install any live distro of Linux from the control panel in Unetbootin. That way you can run a Linux Distro as a Live session off the USB drive and see which works best with your Emachine Laptop. That is what I would do.

You can try Linux Mint, Open Suse, Fedora, plus a whole list that Unetbootin will show.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/#install

I would go with 32 bit versions unless you have more than 4 gig of ram. I run 64 bit Ubuntu besides 32 bit AntiX and see no noticable difference other than how much ram can be enabled using a 64 bit distro. Speed difference is not noticeable at best. But you can try 64 bit. If it does not boot. Then start over with a 32 bit version. My Celeron 900hz Asus EEEPC 900 is 32bit so I am a bit surprised your 900hz emachine is 64 bit. My 64 bit machines are dual core Asus Micro Desktop and Dual Core IBM M57 Desktop. All my Boxes are Linux only systems though.

Thanks for the advice. I have a stack of LiveCD's I have been going through. I usualy use openSUSE as my OS and love it but I also use Mandriva and Kubuntu and all seem to work but Kubuntu 32 bit seems to have an issue booting as it took forever. On the other hand every SUSE CD (32 or 64) I have tried for some reason wont let me access the Interent (even after it says I am connected to my wifi network). As for my processor, it is not 900mhz it's 2.2GHz but it is called a Celeron 900 - I dont know why Intel uses that name as I can see where the confusion comes in. I guess it will be best for me to go with 32bit. Is there any package issues when using 64? Like if I were to go with 64 would I not be able to run some programs? Just wondering

well I have now installed openSUSE 11.2 with JFS on the eMachine. It is working great so far (after running online update). Thanks.

You can try Linux Mint, Open Suse, Fedora

All I've noticed running 64 bit Ubuntu is like when you go to install things like codecs and flash. That the proper procudure is to use the amd_64 versions instead of the i386 versions of codecs and flash. They are available in Medibuntu and Adobe so no problem with getting those to work.

I've got a mix of 32-bit and 64-bit Fedora, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Mandriva on my desktop (AMD 5400+). No obvious differences in performance, but I haven't done any type of benchmarking.