64-bit or 32-bit: that is the question...

The title says all. I still have never tried x64 on either windows or linux, and just want to know what people's opinions are. Is it something heavily recommended over 32-bit? If then, why?

 

64bit is the future, no discussion. plus, it lets you use more RAM (many people have 4Gb installed but can only use about 3Gb due to 32bit OS) and is therefore faster.

 

If you have 64-bit CPU, why not? Find the 64-bit drivers, and use them. The fact that it's a 64-bit CPU itself should get you a few percent performance increase over 323-bit CPU.

Stability wise, it's similar to 32-bit (from MS Windows perspective). I've used a few 64-bit Debian based and also Fedora, and they all worked like a charm.

 

many software don't support 64-bit OS

 

Please, keep the misinformation/FUD out of this thread. Most software DOES support 64bit operation, it's only a few applications that don't.

When you're talking about Linux (and Windows) the only software that doesn't support 64bit is proprietary crap like Flash (which runs decently through a wrapper) and browser Java plugins (which actually works fine in Konqueror). Other than that, there's no problem.

 

How much RAM does your computer have? If you have more than 3GB, then go for the 64 bit. Otherwise, 32bit would probably be better for you.

 

According to Thomas, 32bit linux can support 4GB+ RAM.

 

It can't. It's not something the OS can decide, but if it's 32bit, it just can't do 4Gb.

And 64 is extremely.. uh, similar to 32-bit. I don't mean it speeds and stuff, I mean in stability and usability. I've recently made my switch, and, frankly, I don't even see the difference to when I used 32-bit. People just assume that if you use 64-bit your computer will be half broken and only partially usable, but it's completely untrue. Support is growing exponentially, and there are only benefits, no drawbacks to 64-bit.

All my drivers are supported, all the programs I use are supported. 64bit beats 32bit. No question.

 

You're right, after a fashion. Through PAE.

Not quite. If you use a 32bit Linux, you CAN use 4GB+ of RAM, if your system supports PAE. There are some flaky interactions, and it imposes something like a 1-2 cycle penalty per memory access, which can make things much slower.

I used to have a 32-bit Xeon desktop with 5GB of fully accessible RAM in it... no more than 4GB of RAM per app (that's a hard 32bit limit), but the system as a whole could use all 5GB of it.

I do agree that 64bit Linux is virtually identical to 32bit, though. Only issues are basically with browser plugins and proprietary software, and even then, 32bit software can run pretty much perfectly under 64bit Linux from my experience.

 

Ohh.. I guess you learn something new everyday..

 

I agree here, but not entirely. E.g. we used to have linux ws with 16gb ram and 32 bit PAE kernels, of course, this kernel enable to see the 'whole' ram chunk, but anyway, application, or filesize is still limited by the 4gb restriction.
That means it surely helps, if you run 2 appz and each claim 3gb ram but on 64bit native it can claim ram withou this restriction.
We switched to 64b as soon as it was possible. We do car crashtesting and its common to work with files larger than 4gb and of course the cpu usage .... per cycle it chew 64bits compared to 32 bits on 32b systems ... simply 64b is future, that we live now!