Does the 32 Bit Mint 17 Mate Work Better Than The 64 Bit?

[mandoman]

When I had Mint 16 Mate installed on my computers, they ran like silk, but things have changed. I have a 64 Bit Inspiron Laptop, and a 64 Bit Desktop, both dual-core Intel, with plenty of onboard RAM. Since I have installed the 64 Bit Mint 17 Mate on both computers, there have been weird things happening that I don't know how to fix. Things like images/file folders distorting at the bottom when dragging from one location, to another. I switched to Chromium because Google Chrome Stable is no longer stable, but even with Chromium there are problems. One is when I close it down, a blank screen square appears on the upper right side of the screen. I can wipe it away by swiping the pointer across it while holding the left mouse button down, but this kind of thing never happened in 16, or even 14. On Mint 16, and under, I was able to open multiple windows with no noticeable problems, which was as it should be considering the processing power on these two rigs. When I open over four or more windows with Mint 17, especially if one of them is the browser, the files act strange, like breaking up in certain areas, or the inability to minimize a window (usually the browser) until I close several of the other windows.

Maybe I'm just complaining, but these issues don't seem normal to me, as I'm use to Linux Mint running smooth, and mostly error free. Is anyone else having problems with Mint 17 Mate 64 Bit? Would the 32 Bit version work better on a 64 Bit machine? Just trying to get a handle on this.

[PatH57]

hi ,

there is no straight answer to this, Mint 13 is older but well suported so drivers, applications and so on should work right out of the box.

What are you using your PCs for?

Also please post the results of

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inxi -Fxz

on your new mint installations

you need to run this in terminal and copy paste the results back here.

[DrHu]

There are still lots of aplications, browsers for example that run under 64bit OS's
--there may be 64bit aplications but you have to search for them, don't asume just because it is a 64bit OS, everything is runing in 64bit space..

[mandoman]

I use them for lots of things, including paper work, e-mail, games (a few), and anything I do on the Internet at any particular time. Here is the result from the laptop. I'll send the desktop in a bit.

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System:    Host: Inspiron-N5030 Kernel: 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.2) 
           Desktop: N/A Distro: Linux Mint 17 Qiana
Machine:   System: Dell product: Inspiron N5030
           Mobo: Dell model: 0N7J7M Bios: Dell version: A02 date: 09/13/2010
CPU:       Dual core Pentium CPU T4500 (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 ssse3) bmips: 9177.58 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1200.00 MHz 2: 1200.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller bus-ID: 00:02.0 
           X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: intel (unloaded: fbdev,vesa) Resolution: 1366x768@60.1hz 
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel GM45 Express Chipset GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.1.3 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card: Intel 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.13.0-24-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) driver: ath9k bus-ID: 0c:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet driver: atl1c ver: 1.0.1.1-NAPI port: df00 bus-ID: 09:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 320.1GB (12.8% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: SAMSUNG_HM321HI size: 320.1GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 291G used: 39G (14%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 3.18GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 171 Uptime: 2 min Memory: 616.9/2972.7MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4 

[mandoman]

Okay, here is the results for the Desktop.

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System:    Host: Asus5800 Kernel: 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.2) Desktop: N/A Distro: Linux Mint 17 Qiana
Machine:   Mobo: ASUSTeK model: P5KPL-CM version: x.xx Bios: American Megatrends version: 0702 date: 08/27/2010
CPU:       Dual core Pentium CPU E5800 (-MCP-) cache: 2048 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 12799.7 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 1200.00 MHz 2: 2800.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA G92 [GeForce 9800 GTX / 9800 GTX+] bus-ID: 01:00.0 
           X.Org: 1.15.1 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: fbdev,vesa,nouveau) Resolution: 1280x1024@60.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: GeForce 9800 GTX/9800 GTX+/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 3.3.0 NVIDIA 337.25 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card-1: Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio Controller driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
           Card-2: Creative Labs SB Live! EMU10k1 driver: snd_emu10k1 port: e880 bus-ID: 04:01.0
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture ver: k3.13.0-24-generic
Network:   Card: Qualcomm Atheros AR8121/AR8113/AR8114 Gigabit or Fast Ethernet driver: ATL1E port: dc00 bus-ID: 02:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 570.1GB (11.1% used) 1: id: /dev/sda model: WDC_WD3200AAJS size: 320.1GB 
           2: id: /dev/sdb model: SAMSUNG_SP2504C size: 250.1GB 
Partition: ID: / size: 290G used: 59G (22%) fs: ext4 ID: swap-1 size: 4.28GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap 
RAID:      No RAID devices detected - /proc/mdstat and md_mod kernel raid module present
Sensors:   None detected - is lm-sensors installed and configured?
Info:      Processes: 172 Uptime: 2 min Memory: 697.1/3952.8MB Runlevel: 2 Gcc sys: 4.8.2 Client: Shell inxi: 1.8.4

I've noticed those readings for the processors before, and they seem really low. They are both 3.2 GHz processors, and I have them set in the BIOS for Performance.. Are the numbers given there only what is being utilized at the moment?

[Incentive I.C]

When I had Mint 16 Mate installed on my computers, they ran like silk, but things have changed. I have a 64 Bit Inspiron Laptop, and a 64 Bit Desktop, both dual-core Intel, with plenty of onboard RAM. Since I have installed the 64 Bit Mint 17 Mate on both computers, there have been weird things happening that I don't know how to fix. Things like images/file folders distorting at the bottom when dragging from one location, to another. I switched to Chromium because Google Chrome Stable is no longer stable, but even with Chromium there are problems. One is when I close it down, a blank screen square appears on the upper right side of the screen. I can wipe it away by swiping the pointer across it while holding the left mouse button down, but this kind of thing never happened in 16, or even 14. On Mint 16, and under, I was able to open multiple windows with no noticeable problems, which was as it should be considering the processing power on these two rigs. When I open over four or more windows with Mint 17, especially if one of them is the browser, the files act strange, like breaking up in certain areas, or the inability to minimize a window (usually the browser) until I close several of the other windows.

Maybe I'm just complaining, but these issues don't seem normal to me, as I'm use to Linux Mint running smooth, and mostly error free. Is anyone else having problems with Mint 17 Mate 64 Bit? Would the 32 Bit version work better on a 64 Bit machine? Just trying to get a handle on this.

These sound like hardware problems(Graphics maybe?) with mint so you might want to post somewhere for help. Although I doubt the 64bit is the problem.

[PatH57]

Hi

your laptop has an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator (GMA) 4500M and the desktop has a GeForce 9800 GTX / 9800 GTX+. It seems you are using the open source drivers (you didn't change anything did you?)

You could try the proprietary drivers, start maybe with the desktop and see how it goes.

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http://www.nvidia.com/object/unix.html

the numbers shown are ok, as long as you don't have more then 4GB of memory 64 bit will not really give you any real improvement, correct drivers may.

[mandoman]

Well, now I'm really confused. I thought I had retrieved the latest drivers for the desktop, including the latest NVidia drivers for Linux. I flashed the BIOS from the Asus website, so it should be fully up to date. I guess I can see how the desktop with the NVidia card might have complications, but the Dell Inspiron is pretty basic. Aren't the updates suppose to keep these machines up to date? If I have to do it manually, that's not a problem, but I guess I just figured the updates did it. There is also the fact that I did not have these problems with Mint 16, though I had all the same hardware on both the laptop, and the desktop.

I'll try getting some help in the hardware section of the forum. Thanks for your suggestions.

[PatH57]

Hi ,

there is always a difference between open source drivers (included and updated through the update manager) and proriatary drivers given by the manufacturer.

Check if ou enabled the non free packages

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sudo apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree

[mandoman]

It downloaded the non-free drivers, so I suppose I didn't have them. I'm not sure which drivers too witch you refer, though. I got the NVidia driver following the instructions for Mint Petra 16 (http://www.binarytides.com/install-nvid ... x-mint-16/), as I couldn't find any that specified Mint 17 at the time. I doubt there are newer drivers than the ones I installed, at least for Linux, but I'll check with NVidia again. I posted my dilemma in the Hardware section of this forum, but have seen nothing as of yet.