The host is

Intel i3 5006U 6GB RAM on Win10

And the guest is Linux

Until now I have run 32-bit Linux with VMWare but I just switched to 64-bit Linux on the VMWare but it appears slower and less responsive with the 64-bit

Can anyone give me an explanation? Should I go back to 32 bit?

Windows has a number of ways to view metrics that may tell the issue as well as viewing the metrics in Linux.

Guess we can also ask some questions too.

Bit size of Windows 10?
Amount of ram dedicated to client?


You will get a lot of opinions as to 32 or 64 but in the end, you can run 32 bit for a few more years and there will be some distros that may support 32 bit for a few decades.

64-bit virtual machines generally do better with more ram than 32-bit VMs. Are you using VMWare Workstation?

64 bit s always will be less resonsive than 32 bit ones.
The only valid reasons for using 64bit over 32bit is for large memory needs and if you don't have or need that then there is little point until all software is designed and optimised for 64bit.

Don't forget that 64bit is ALWAYS moving twice as much information around as a minimum. Also the ram overheads for 64bit OSs is going to be a lot larger- again because the same number of instructions are going to take up twice as much space.
It is only when you actually get to handling large amounts of data and large memory needs that 64bit machines start to become more efficient.
The big reason for the switch to 64bit is the need for the increased addressibilty. It is seldom going to be faster.