Hi guys; what's your opinion about Using Linux 32bits vs 64bits?

i found this article.

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...204_3264&num=2

I would always use 64bit on machine that supports that. If you don't have specific reasons try 64bit version.

That article is 2 years old now.

Use the correct version for your hardware. In other words 64 bit for 64 bit, 32 bit pae for newer 32 bit processors, and plain 32 bit for older 32 bit processors such as Pentium 4 and older.

Thanks guys; i don't know if my PC Lenovo Thinkcenter M71e Intel core (TM) I5 2400CPU 3.1ghz ram 3.8gb with ATI video card HD6450 will handles 64bit i have xubuntu 1310 32bit,but i want to try Ubuntu 1404 64bit.i know this is a testing mode yet,and will come out in april a Ubuntu1404 LTS

The Core i5 is a fully fledged 64 bit CPU, 64 bit Linux will run just fine on it.

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For up to 4 GB RAM i dont see many reasons to use 64 bit OS. For 8 or more, it can be considered, but its not required.
- 64 bit isnt really required for anything.
- It doesnt run faster than 32 bit, except in certain cases, usually where large memory operations (4 GB or more used by a SINGLE application) take place - these are typically large server loads that dont really happen in a desktop environment.
- Linux 32 bit kernels can access 64 GB ram by default nowadays.
- Many proprietary programs are 32 bit only, like Skype or Steam. On 64 bit you will have to install 64 and 32 bit libraries for them to work. Steam for example needs 32 bit video drivers - if you use open source drivers and want to build the latest version yourself, you will find that some dev libs may not install under both arches etc.
- 64 bit apps use more memory by default. For example Java apps can use huge amounts vs 32 bit.

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Double the amount of registers, registers are double in size, 64 bit distros are optimized to use at least SSE2 for floating point operations, while i686 must default to the much slower FPU.
Also, you don't have to use HIGH_MEM, which is a must on 32 bit for any system with more than 892MB RAM and introduces unnecessary overhead. While Linux Torvalds states that he would not use 32 bit for any system with 2GB or more RAM other kernel developers go even further and recommend 64 bit for anything >=1GB of RAM. In general I trust kernel developers to have more insight on that than I have.

Distros compiled for x86_64/AMD64 can per definition assume that a SSE2 unit is present in the CPU, which seriously can speed up any software making use of media manipulation (image editing, media converting, ...). There is no need for large memory operations to get an improvement from 64 bit.
With a large overhead. It is not recommended at all to run a 32 bit kernel on a system with 64 GB of RAM.
Can only comment for Slackware here, I generally compile many parts of the graphics stack myself, using newer versions than by default present in Slackware. No problem at all with Steam here, I don't use Skype, so can't say about that.
May be a problem on system with less than a GB of RAM, on modern system that usually come with 4GB or more this is negligible.

In short, I can't see any reason to buy a 64 bit CPU and then only use one half of it.

Well, my opinion is based on my few years of use of Linux (7?) almost exclusively and i did not see ANY visible improvements when using 32 or 64 bit distros. I had 4 GB RAM and i had absolutely no issues with using it and saw no slowdowns (which may be true if some apps use large amounts of memory, but i never saw that). I even had the memory almost full with a few VMs running and didnt notice slow downs.
Im pretty sure that SSE2 etc are used in 32 bit kernels too, especially if you build them. There is a tiny fraction of actual 32 bit CPUs used nowadays.

That i did see is compiling the latest OSS video drivers for both 32 and 64 bit (mesa, drm, X drivers) isnt really a breeze when you cannot install half of the dev packages because they are not multiarch - this is a reality on Debian where you have pretty much everything needed for building, but cannot install some because of overlapping include files.
Building Wine is another pain like that, since building it for 64 bit (that cannot run 32 bit code) doesnt bring any benefit, because many Windows apps are in fact exclusively 32 bit, even the "64 bit" labeled ones have 32 bit code sometimes so you have to go for the lowest common denominator, the 32 bit build of Wine. Im not a Wine fan by any stretch, but i have to use certain small programs that are Windows only.

Now i have 64 bit distro (e and it isnt faster or slower for the tasks i use it for (it does use up more memory), regardless of what developer X or Y said or recommended. This is based on my personal observations and problems encountered. From my point of view, the benefits are too small for the additional work it needs sometimes.

Any distro that can run on an Athlon or Pentium III CPU (virtually all distros that have a 32 bit version) must be compiled without SSE2 support, those units are simply non-existent on those CPUs.

Anyways, it may be true for your use-case that you have no (easily recognizable) benefits from 64 bit, but there are many use cases where you have huge benefits from running 64 bit instead (again, anything that even slightly involves floating point calculations).
I can't tell about building stuff on Debian, I use it only on servers and I have no need to compile software on them.
On my Slackware desktops it is no problem at all to compile 32 bit software (though I rather use the clean room solution of using a 32 bit chroot to compile 32 bit packages).

I just checked my laptop (has the stock Debian 32 bit kernel) and cpuinfo listed sse2 too. Newer kernels (i686) dont even run on really old CPUs (and SSE2 is more than 10 years old).

cpuinfo lists the features of your CPU, not what is supported by the kernel. Also, i686 runs on anything from Pentium Pro(1995)/Pentium 2(1997) or Athlon (1999) upwards.

Anyways, this discussion has been in many threads on LQ, we shouldn't make another one.

It is 64bit. But, if you ever want to know for use run this command on terminal

You should get either 32 or 64 for your processor.

If your system has less than 4GB of ram, a 32 bit is good enough. I use a 64 bit distro because my system has 8GB of ram and a 64 bit distro is require for it to see 4GB and higher.

No it doesnt. 32 bit kernels can be compiled with PAE support that gives you access up to 64GB or something. In fact most recent distro stock i386 kernels have PAE activated.

In Debian the 486 kernel, not the 686-pae kernel, does not have pae activated. This discussion has turned into one of opinion, you have yours others have theirs. Live with it.

So:
This is a plain statement that Linux REQUIRES a 64 bit kernel to address more than 4 GB RAM, which is about a fact (NOT opinion) and its NOT true - exactly because the said "686-pae" 32 bit kernels can address up to 64 GB, on 64-bit capable CPUs.

So: where is the fact - that other kernels designed for CPUs that arent even capable of this CANT do it - is even relevant here???

Offtopic @k3lt01:
Hm. I thought it was started to ask for opinions. My bad.
BTW isnt that forums are for?? For technical details you have Wikipedia, Google etc, but on forums you ask questions to access other real peoples knowledge, opinions and experiences.