[SOLVED] 32bit or 64bit KDE

[RoyD]

Hi All, I was wondering what benefits I would get if I reinstalled to the 64 bit KDE. Specs for machine is in my signature. Presently my PC is reasonably fast (well its not slow) and its stable. I do have lots of programs installed, all installed from MCC. I recently increased my ram to 4gb. Any thoughts most appreciated. Roy

[tom_]

you can found on the net some good answers to your question, like this one:

http://www.howtogeek.com/165144/htg-explains-should-you-use-the-32-bit-or-64-bit-edition-of-ubuntu-linux/

Feel free to ask details if some point is not clear

[doktor5000]

To be honest, with 4GB RAM there are no benefits, only slight drawbacks.

[jiml8]

To be honest, with 4GB RAM there are no benefits, only slight drawbacks.

I interpret OP's question to be about reinstalling a 64 bit distro rather than the 32 bit distro, even though he said "KDE".

For about 3 years I had a 32 bit distro on a 64 bit platform, though I also had 8 GB of RAM and used a PAE kernel. After switching to a 64 bit distro, I noticed no particular improvement in speed, except for disk I/O which is definitely faster. There have been very noticeable stability improvements (particularly in Windows 7 virtual machines) as a result of the change, though since this was a move from a Mandriva 2010 2.6.x PAE kernel to a Mageia 2/3 3.4/3.8 kernel I can't attribute the stability improvement to just the 32 bit to 64 bit change. In fact, the improvement in performance of my Win 7 Pro virtual machine is quite dramatic - not just in speed but in stability and reliability.

When I migrated to 64 bit hardware in early 2010, I investigated performance issues to decide if I should bite the bullet and install a 64 bit distro. What I found was some head-to-head benchmarking done at Phoronix which showed that there was only a negligible performance difference between 32 bit with PAE and 64 bit, except in disk I/O where the performance difference was rather substantial. This would come into play if, for instance, the OP made heavy use of mysql.

So, the move will probably lead to very modest performance improvements in most cases, with a slight penalty in memory usage because of the 64 bit wide instructions and data addresses, and a penalty in disk space usage because of the need to have both /lib and /lib64 directories. If OP is using virtual machines, then I would say the move is justified. If OP makes heavy use of disk I/O such as extensive database use, then the move is justified. If neither of those, then the move is very optional, I think.

[RoyD]

Thank you All for your information.
After reading and digesting all the good information I will stay where I am.
Thank you again for all the friendly support

[Peanuts]

I opted to torrent the 32-bit version of Mageia. My laptop only has 2 gigs of RAM, and isn't expandable beyond 3 gigs, so there is no advantage to 64-bit on my machine. Rule of thumb is that unless your motherboard supports > 4 gigs, there is no advantage to 64 bit. If my laptop were expandable, I'd go 64-bit just in case one day I decide to purchase more memory.