32 or 64 bit version?
Posted: 2011/07/13 23:43:10
I am considering CentOS 6 for my home PC. A general purpose PC for a power user. Nothing fancy but I want a simple, stable foundation. I have been using Ubunt for about 4 years but I am not happy with the direction Canonical is heading (Unity interface, change for change sake, etc.) At the moment I am running Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit. I have been running it for a little more than a year. I used the 64 bit version of 9.10 before that. I think the 64 bit version was a mistake.
Hardware:
Dell Studio XPS 8000 - i7-860 CPU with 8 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD5450, plenty of disk.
Apps
Gnome desktop with normal PC stuff such as OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird, Firefox, Xsane, Gimp, VLC player, K3b
VMWare Player - A couple of Windows VMs for some old apps which I have not found Linux equivalents, testing new distros, a LAMP server for some PHP MySQL work etc. A fun toy and something to apply the power of the i7-860 to.
Some apps under Wine - Agent and GrabIt for Usenet, Visual FoxPro database and a couple of others
Bottom line, I have a 64 bit CPU but no 64 bit apps. I initially thought I needed a 64 bit OS to access the 8 GB of RAM. I since learned that a PAE kernel will do that sufficiently for my purposes. I do not have any apps which need more than a couple of GB of memory. Including the VMs. So I am thinking that the 32 bit version of CentOS would be fine.
The cons I have found with Ubuntu 64 bit include:
Browser problems - especially related to java and flash
Nero Linux (CD/DVD burning app) will not do double layer DVDs (not an issue really as I generally use K3b)
The pros:
I don't know. Since I can access all of my ram with a 32 bit pae OS I do not see why I would want to run the 64 bit OS.
Can anyone show me what I am missing?
TIA,
KEN
Hardware:
Dell Studio XPS 8000 - i7-860 CPU with 8 GB RAM, ATI Radeon HD5450, plenty of disk.
Apps
Gnome desktop with normal PC stuff such as OpenOffice.org, Thunderbird, Firefox, Xsane, Gimp, VLC player, K3b
VMWare Player - A couple of Windows VMs for some old apps which I have not found Linux equivalents, testing new distros, a LAMP server for some PHP MySQL work etc. A fun toy and something to apply the power of the i7-860 to.
Some apps under Wine - Agent and GrabIt for Usenet, Visual FoxPro database and a couple of others
Bottom line, I have a 64 bit CPU but no 64 bit apps. I initially thought I needed a 64 bit OS to access the 8 GB of RAM. I since learned that a PAE kernel will do that sufficiently for my purposes. I do not have any apps which need more than a couple of GB of memory. Including the VMs. So I am thinking that the 32 bit version of CentOS would be fine.
The cons I have found with Ubuntu 64 bit include:
Browser problems - especially related to java and flash
Nero Linux (CD/DVD burning app) will not do double layer DVDs (not an issue really as I generally use K3b)
The pros:
I don't know. Since I can access all of my ram with a 32 bit pae OS I do not see why I would want to run the 64 bit OS.
Can anyone show me what I am missing?
TIA,
KEN