[solved] 32 or 64 bit?

[DebbieV]

I just bought a netbook/laptop (HP Pavillion dm1-4170us).
It came with Win7 64 bit.
My last laptop (Dell Vostro 2 yrs old) had Ubuntu 32bit pre-installed from Dell, so I think I chose 32 bit when choosing my version of Linux Mint.

How do I know which to choose? 32 bit or 64 bit?

Thx!

Code: Select all

inxi -F                                                          
System:    Host DebsHP Kernel 3.0.0-19-generic-pae i686 (32 bit) Desktop KDE 4.7.4 Distro Linux Mint 12 KDE                                                     
Machine:   System Hewlett-Packard (portable) product HP Pavilion dm1 Notebook PC version 0696110000204600000320100                                              
           Mobo Hewlett-Packard model 17CF version 45.14 Bios Hewlett-Packard version F.13 date 12/14/2011                                                      
CPU:       Dual core Intel Core i3-2367M CPU (-HT-MCP-) cache 3072 KB flags (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx)                                       
           Clock Speeds: (1) 800.00 MHz (2) 800.00 MHz (3) 800.00 MHz (4) 800.00 MHz                                                                            
Graphics:  Card: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller                                                                      
           X.Org 1.10.4 drivers vesa,intel unloaded: fbdev Resolution 1368x768@0.0hz                                                                            
           GLX Renderer Rasterizer GLX Version 2.1 Mesa 7.11                    
Audio:     Card Intel 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller driver HDA Intel                                                     
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: 1.0.24                   
Network:   Card-1 Realtek RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller driver r8169                                                                    
           IF: eth0 state: down speed: 10 Mbps duplex: half mac: ec:9a:74:56:15:1b                                                                              
           Card-2 Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1030 driver iwlagn                  
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 4c:eb:42:0a:9a:8d                           
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 500.1GB (4.7% used) 1: /dev/sda Hitachi_HTS54755 500.1GB                                                                             
Partition: ID:/ size: 28G used: 5.2G (20%) fs: ext4 ID:/home size: 202G used: 17G (9%) fs: ext4                                                                 
           ID:swap-1 size: 12.00GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap                   
Sensors:   Error: You do not have the sensors app installed.                    
Info:      Processes 160 Uptime 52 min Memory 632.2/3970.6MB Client Shell inxi 1.7.7  

[corn]

It solely depends on your system. If it came with Win7 64 bits, then I see no reason not to choose 64 bits.

[dagon]

System: Host DebsHP Kernel 3.0.0-19-generic-pae i686 (32 bit) Desktop KDE 4.7.4 Distro Linux Mint 12 KDE

You installed a 32-bit system.

[altair4]

If I'm reading the output of inxi correctly you have 4GB of memory and are using the 32bit PAE kernel. One could argue that you're fine just as you are.

The PAE kernel can access 64GB of memory - just not all at once per process. PAE allows addressing to 64GB but is still limited to the 4GB ( really only 3GB ) limit per process or per application. If I have 8GB of memory on a PAE host I can't create a VBox guest that can access more than 3GB of memory but I can create 2 VBox guests, assign 2GB to each of them, and run both simultaneously.

Unless you're running a server, if you have an application or process that's using more than 3GB of memory on a desktop system the software developer should consider getting an MBA and moving into management.

EDIT: I just looked up a Vostro Laptop ( see attachment ). $61900 dollars for a laptop should have come with more the 4GB of memory in my opinion. Plus Dell's math stinks

[DebbieV]

lol. I actually tried to google MBA kernel. haha. You got me.

OK, so 32bit can natively address 4G of RAM. PAE (Physical Address Extension), even adding one more bit, 33 bits would double what could be addressed to 8G. (I was thinking of adding more RAM myself, as I would have had to wait 2 weeks for HP to add it (build my custom computer) before shipping it to me, and I didn't want to wait that long. I do tend to run quite a lot of stuff at the same time, switching between desktops. (firefox, lots of open windows, thunderbird, ssh, maybe photoshop or gimp, and maybe Netflix.)

But with PAE, which I assume I already have with my 32 bit OS, it can already easily address up to 56G (according to wikipedia).
The problem being if a single process needed to address > 4G at once...
But since I run a lot of small processes at the same time, the 64bit addressing is not that important to me...

Hmmm. what about streaming videos? Will they do better on 64 bit, I wonder...



I may try the 64 bit, to see if it solves my other problems, but I'm not going to make it a high priority.
Thx!