Why is Canonical advising against 64bit for Everyday Desktop Use?

Has anyone found an explanation for this?

Here -->

 

If your know enough to question it then you're not the target audience for the disclaimer. That's why.

 

I don't really like Calvin's response so I'll clarify.

Basically, 32 bit has more testing, and generally works better. You don't have to use hacks to have flash, for example, it just works. 64 bit may work great, but it's still not on the same level as 32 bit - especially with Adobe dropping 64 bit flash.

 

64 bit is only really necessary for massive data processing and manipulation, and certain security benefits. otherwise, it's just a hassle.

 

I wouldn't say that at all, it does work very well.

 

I was just curious why _now_ they would add that verbage...2 years ago I could understand. I figured it revolved around flash mostly.

On my Vostro, 32 bit Peppermint is the fastest distro I've used given general everyday use scenarios...so in my case on this machine, I don't think it really matters anyway.

I see a new version of PCLOS Lxde has just been released...may have to check that one out, _maybe_

 

Uubntu and Canonical have matured VERY MUCH as an operating system and a Company, it's better targeted and looks more professional.

 

It's not that it doesn't work well, it's just that for the vast majority of usage, 32-bit is perfectly adequate. It's like seeing people driving to an office job in an escalade or a lotus. Yea, it's going to get you where to want to go, but it's beyond overkill. Few if any people need the extensibility of 64-bit, and it's pretty rare to see security software actually make use of 64-bit capabilities.

At best, the 64-bit kernel is on par with the 32-bit. Few programs are actually written FOR 64-bit, rather than just recompiled to play nice with the new kernels.

 

Under Windows (and any remotely modern OS), 64-bit OS addresses RAM slower than 32-bit. The reason is a bit involved, but basically, the OS never lets applications access RAM directly, but instead translates everything through the virtual memory (known as 'paging', but not to be confused with page files). Under 32-bit OS's, the virtual memory is at a fixed length of 4kb per 'page'. Under 64-bit, the length has to be expanded to occupy however much RAM you have installed (6GB, 8GB, etc.). This leads to slower virtual memory traversal speed (and thus adds to the process's overhead).

So, in a nutshell, the ability to address more than 4GB of RAM comes at a slight disadvantage in terms of performance for 64-bit machines.

 

Oh don't I remember how some of my first moderating was policing flame wars about the relevency of 64bit, wether or not everybody had to have it to be ready for the 64bit revolution? Did that ever happen? Ubuntu and Kubuntu are both marketed on being user friendly/beginner friendly. 32bit is compatible with everything and just works. That is better for the casual user/beginner. Canonical is just trying to give casual users advise on what they really need.

 

Peppermint for example uses 32bit right now, but automatically installs the PAE kernel if your machine has 4 or more gigs of ram. They are working on a 64bit release, but I don't think it really matters in day to day use, especially given the PAE kernel.

 

PAE may allow use of more memory, but it's not very efficient, and also, it doesn't allow you to take advantage of the other features of 64 bit.

And also, on linux, there is no coding "for" a certain platform unless it's really low level, to the person who said otherwise.

 

64bit is pretty much faster overall for a slight memory use penalty. But with 2GB+, that's not an issue.

The main problem with 64bit is actually Flash, and various other plugins and such that are still 32bit. Because you can't have a completely 64bit system, it causes a lot more problems for end-user support than just using a 32bit OS.

There are very few things that you actually need to write specifically for 64bit... most apps will get speedups going to 64bit just because the compiler has more registers and resources to use for optimizing the programs. And every program that uses a lot of memory will get a performance boost. 32bit systems are limited to 2GB address space for apps typically.

I'd like to see benchmarks showing that affects actual performance. Because all the 64bit vs 32bit benchmarks that I've seen show 64bit as faster overall, even if there are some edge cases where a certain memory access might take a cycle longer, the overall benefits of 64bit processing far outweigh those possible slowdowns.

PAE is an ugly hack, and it causes at least a cycle penalty for each memory access (1-10%, period) according to Redhat, and Phoronix isn't a fan, either: [Phoronix] Ubuntu 32-bit, 32-bit PAE, 64-bit Kernel Benchmarks

The ONLY reason to use 32bit is if you have 3GB or less RAM and you want to use legacy apps like Flash without hunting down the 64bit releases. And that's it.

 

Wow, getting quoted the heck for an off the top of my head response.

I didn't mean coding specifically for 64-bit kernel, but rather to take advantage of the benefits of 64-bit. Programs might be compiled under 64-bit and get a minor boost, but won't improve much outside the realm of accessing more memory. Frankly, until every library is fully 64-bit optimized, even recompiling won't help alot.

The main problem isn't flash at all. The 10 beta 64-bit runs perfectly fine on the AMT. In many cases the problem is it's frankly not worth the effort to bother recompiling a program that consumes, at best, 100mb of memory. I can't recall the last time I ever used over 2GB in total on a personal linux machine, outside of GIMP, opening a bajillion chromium tabs, or ffmpeg.

Anyway, my recommendation cutoff is usually 4GB for 32-bit (the max for the architecture is 3.2-3.7 GB) or 64-bit for 4GB and above.

 

You didn't read what I said, or look at any of the links I provided. You don't have to code for 64bit any more than you have to code for 32bit, in general. Performance will improve quite noticeably inside the realm of 2GB accesses simply because the compiler has many more registers to use for optimizing performance as well as guaranteed access to many other instructions that you don't necessarily get with a 32bit compile and hand-coding cases (SSE comes to mind). This of course depends on the application and where it's performance sensitive.

No, you won't see OpenOffice.org suddenly start reading your mind. It is mostly constrained by disk access. But video transcoding and other operations can go much faster, and they don't need extra memory to do so, as well as database and application servers, and various other programs. Most anything that is CPU-limited can benefit from recompiling in 64bit because of the extra registers.

64bit is not just for extra memory. There are a lot of other benefits as well. Please stop perpetuating that myth. If you have 2GB or more of system memory, you can see real performance improvements.

 

I take that as "I disagree with Canonicals statement that 64 bit is not best for day to day use"

 

I'm not Canonical and I don't have to deal with people upset because Flash doesn't work right

It makes pragmatic sense from Canonical's point of view. But it also creates a chicken-and-egg situation where people don't develop for 64bit because people aren't moving to 64bit. And considering I run nothing but 64bit systems throughout my home except for my router (and that's a non-trivial number of systems), I'd like to think I've sussed out most of the issues

 

Chill out. I did read the links and have been trying to keep up on 64-bit tech. I'm just talking from my own perspective (I'm not a coder), and frankly the majority of people wouldn't substantially benefit from 64-bit aside from possibly due to memory extensions. I personally run everything I can 64-bit, even if it runs in betas to take advantage of the performance benefits from the architecture. But I do more than browse and game, and I'm sure most people on notebookreview forums do too. But for the average user who's just curious about Ubuntu/Linux and just wants ease of use, the compatibility issues can be a deal breaker (even if it's just flash). Performance benefits from an improved architecture would never be realized on a simple web browsing/light gaming machine, or at least not noticeably.

32-bit is compatible with more hardware and is absolutely acceptable as a place to start for the new-to-Linux user. Ubuntu is exactly where the new-to-Linux start, which is why recommending 32-bit is a good idea, in my book. It's just a question of lowest common denominator, not what runs 10% faster. IF a user has 64-bit capable hardware AND is willing to troubleshoot his/her machine, 64-bit is perfectly fine. But it's that latter part that's always lacking.

 

The thing is that Linux is not Windows. There aren't nearly the issues with 64bit and drivers for Linux that there are with Windows. If this were a Windows forum, I would agree with your assessment that 32bit is warranted for less than 4GB of RAM. But as this is Linux, there's no real reason to use 32bit unless you have less than 2GB of RAM, because you will see performance increases across most apps, and nothing except Flash will break, and that's not even that hard to fix.

 

Easy for us, but not for our mothers.

 

Okay- a newbie here and confused.

So, I am buying a Asus UL80vt machine with Windows 7 and 64-bit. If I download Ubuntu and Wubi to install it along side of Windows 7, with 4 gig of RAM-

Do I download the 32-bit Ubuntu or 64-Bit? If the rest of my new laptop is set to run 64-bit would running 32-bit Ubuntu work let alone cause any other issues?

Thanks!

 

To get maximum performance out of your 4gigs of RAM 64bit would be the way to go..64 bit OS runs faster on 64 bit cpu. 32 bit will just run on 64 bit cpu and there are more programs, compatibility avail. for 32 bit. if you are just going to use your machine for normal stuff, or even relatively advanced stuff and you just want it to work well, I'd go with 32 bit.
If you are planning on doing some super-intensive computing work, or have custom software you want to run on a 64 bit machine for the added power, then use the 64 bit. Although you can make 32 bit programs run on 64 bit but it does take some special installing.i'm not sure what type of progress they have made since the last time i've looked but there is that a lot of software, especially proprietary stuff like hardware drivers,that doesn't run as well/at all on 64 bit.For instance Java, flash player are harder to get working on 64 bit..

 

The ONLY thing that is more compatible with 32bit than 64bit is Flash. You can run any 32bit app on a 64bit version of Linux, so there's no "compatibility" choice to make.

Seriously, why do people keep saying this? USE 64 BIT. Unless you know you need 32bit for a specific reason, 64bit is what you want.

 

I did say you can make 32 bit programs run on 64 bit..Linux provides backward compatibility for running 32-bit executables and most open-source software can easily be compiled for x86_64...i should have been more specific...
all you need to do is install the necessary software libraries to run the 32-bit software. Fortunately, many Linux distributions package these libraries for you..anyways..thanks pita...
so with that said..the only thing i see you getting the most out of your 64 bit system is the use of all the 4 gigs of ram...

 

What's all this talk about needing flash? Take your pick.
Gnash
Swfdec
Lightspark

 

good options calvin.....out of those i use Swfdec..works very well

 

Yeah, and you can just use 32 bit flash on 64 bit linux anyways.

Why the HELL would ANYONE use those? They are absolute CRAP, valiant effort, but they hardly EVER work, are buggy, don't support all of the features, etc. Hardly a worthy alternative.

When they do work, it's only with youtube, and nothing else. It's crap.

Oh, and swfdec is unmaintained.

 

Tell us what you really think, Thomas.....

 

I think he just did ...lol

swfdec..has always worked well for me..don't know what happened with your installation :/

 

I will admit, it worked better than the absolute rubbish that is gnash and lightspark, however it doesn't work with 90% of the flash out there, and it has been unmaintained for over a year.

Point is:
Opensource flash is rubbish.

 

i will agree with you about gnash and lightspark..have tried them both..didn't like em..i am still a swfdec user though..

 

Use it by all means, but it hasn't been updated in almost a year.

 

yup i know that..the last stable release was december of 2008. though..it still works for me...if it ain't broke dont' fix it i have also used the flashplugin-installer package..to install adobe. both good options for running flash IMO, but depends on the user and what you can get to work, and visa versa, what u need and what u dont. anyways..i think we both made our points..moving on...
outta curiousity what flash app do u use thomas?

 

My point in stressing swfdec's unmaintained nature was to point out that it has received ZERO bur or security updates in the past 18 months.

Flashplugin-installer essentially downloads flash from the adobe website and installs it just like you would, but automates it. Same with adobe-flashplugin. Me personally, I use the one from adobe, however there are times when I don't use flash at all.