Ease of 32bit vs 64bit installation

[Nio Wiklund]

Hi Jonathan,

See inline comments

Best regards
Nio

On 2013-06-16 21:23, Jonathan Marsden wrote:
> On 06/16/2013 09:15 AM, Eric Bradshaw wrote:
> 
>> On 06/16/2013 08:39 AM, Jonathan Marsden wrote:
>>> On 06/16/2013 06:40 AM, Eric Bradshaw wrote:
> 
>>>> One thing I'd like to add is I don't mess with the 64bit 
>>>> installers - there is nothing wrong with installing a 32bit
>>>> Lubuntu on a 64bit machine and (for me) makes it easier going
>>>> forward.
> 
>>> Can you explain why?  What is the issue with the 64bit installer,
>>> and have you filed a Launchpad bug about it, so we can duplicate
>>> the issue and (hopefully) fix it?
> 
>> No bug. Nothing to fix. I just find it easier.
> 
> If it is different, such that i386 is easier to install than amd64,
> please describe that difference.  It probably should not exist, and so
> would be considered a bug :)  Can you document that difference for us?
> 
>> I may be accused of living in the past, but in my opinion, for now,
>> there is more stability, less work-arounds needed, and more software
>> available for 32bit.
> 
> I can't think of any of the close to 30000 packages in the default
> Ubuntu repositories that is available for i386 but not on amd64.  There
> may be something in multiverse where a commercial vendor has not
> provided a 64bit version... which packages are you thinking of?
> Likewise if you find Ubuntu software that is unstable on amd64 but
> stable on i386, please do file a bug report about that.  Do you have any
> specific examples?  Especially any that are reproducible?

andrew.46 who is looking after mplayer (svn) wrote two weeks ago in post
#1 in

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2149564

"Bear in mind that codecs for 64 bit users are pretty minimal, the real
benefits here are for the 32 bit users. There is a continuing drive to
bring access to these file formats under the libavcodec umbrella so
hopefully one day these codecs will no longer be necessary."

I think there can still be problems or limitations with some 64-bit
multimedia packages and libraries.

> 
>> Plus, as I am usually installing on smaller hard drives and almost
>> never have more than 2GB of RAM on a single computer (in fact my
>> usual is somewhere between 512MB and 1 GB);
> 
> Oh, it's 100% fine to choose 32bit on smaller machines... but that is
> different from saying the i386 install "makes it easier", or that 64bit
> software is inherently less stable, or that software is not available
> for 64bit Lubuntu that is available for 32bit Lubuntu.  The experience
> should basically be the same, the available software from the official
> Ubuntu repositories should be the same.
> 
> I'm not suggesting loading a 32bit OS on older hardware with low RAM is
> bad; it probably makes sense.  But it should be a choice.  I'm just
> wanting to make sure that any issues with installing and running the
> 64bit version on 64bit capable hardware are known about, and clearly
> described.
> 
>> there is less memory usage with a 32 bit OS and software.
> 
> Have you quantified this difference running Lubuntu, and documented your
> tests and their results somewhere?  That could be useful info.  Actually
> we are (Ali is!) about to do some RAM usage tests for 13.10, and I had
> not made testing 64bit vs 32bit a part of that... do you have solid test
> showing the difference is big enough that we need to test both
> architectures, because the installer may need more RAM for amd64 than
> for i386 installs to succeed?

I tested it but did not document it but a couple of years ago, probably
when 12.04 was released. I think the 64-bit version is stepping forward
all the time, so new tests are welcome :-)

My result was that the 64-bit version uses significantly more memory, at
least below 3-4 GB total installed RAM. It is easy to compare doing the
same thing and running the system monitor or htop at the same time. I
have also made a script, that logs the ram and swap with 5 seconds
interval. And it does not work faster (I tested a few tasks, cpu
intensive, ram intensive and read/write intensive), some tasks were a
little faster, some tasks a bit slower with 64-bits. (I had expected the
64-bit version to be significantly faster.)

So I prefer 32 bits in computers with less or equal to 3-4 GB RAM. My
family has three computers with 4 GB and one with 8 GB. All the others
(aging and suitable for Lubuntu) have 2 GB RAM or less.

> 
>> Since this 32bit OS works on both 32bit and 64bit machines, I
>> would choose, for now, the 32bit version.
> 
> That's 100% fine.  It is your choice.  But saying that you make the
> choice because it is "easier" clearly implies that amd64 installs are
> "harder" for you... which IMO ought not to be the case.  And we can't
> fix bugs we do not know about.
> 
>> For me its like the difference between the IPv4 and IPv6 Internet
>> protocols. The IPv6 technology is great for the future, but in my
>> opinion, for the average user today; it isn't quite ready for
>> prime-time.
> 
> I take it you do not live in Japan or other S.E Asian locations where I
> am told you can't get a public IPv4 address from some ISPs any more :)
> 
> Have you actually tried using IPv6 in Lubuntu with an IPv6-friendly ISP?
>  What happened?  Did you document your experience online somewhere, so
> others can benefit from that?  I've played with IPv6, but don't have an
> IPv6-friendly ISP, and setting up tunneling etc. works, but is not what
> I'd expect a normal novice user to want to do :)
> 
> I'd actually be *very* interested in someone who does have an
> IPv6-friendly ISP testing an Lubuntu install that is IPv6 only, perhaps
> deliberately blocking all IPv4 at their firewall router and then doing
> the install, and reporting how well it goes, how easy it is to do, etc.
>  Why?  Because it may not be all that long before home users in the USA
> and Europe also start getting "only" an IPv6 address rather than an IPv4
> public address, and I think we would do well to be ready for that.  I
> have not tested it, but I am told MS Windows is already fully capable of
> working in such an IPv6-only environment.  We should be too.
> 
>>>> I also think you should wipe the hard drive clean first with DBAN
> 
>>> Can you explain the reason for this?  How and why would the installed
>>> 10.04 break the 12.10 installer?
> 
>> I don't think the installed 10.04 would break the 12.10 installer at 
>> all. However, a "clean" install of the OS is better - in my opinion.
>> The 12.10 installer doesn't truly erase the old info off the hard
>> drive when it says, "Erase and Install..." but DBAN does.
> 
> Right.  So, basically you are saying that it is "better" only for data
> security purposes.  It is better if someone with a scanning electron
> microsope has the time and money to use it on your hard drive to try to
> recover the previous 10.04 filesystem.
> 
> Which may well be technically true, but for most people, that is not a
> major concern... have you tried to recover an "old" Linux install after
> a new Linux install has been written to the disk over it, and succeeded?
>  In the system in question, since it has been sitting around unused for
> 2 years, I doubt it contained highly security sensitive information.  So
> the "you should" statement was somewhat theoretical, rather than being a
> practical suggestion for how to overcome the installation issue being
> presented.  Fair enough.
> 
> BTW, I'm not trying to "pick on you" here!  I'd just like to get maximum
> value for the community out of your experience and statements, by more
> fully understanding what lies behind them.  Your organization has
> probably done a lot more Lubuntu installations than the average user
> ever will :)  Incidentally, a counter on your site showing how many PCs
> you have given away running Lubuntu would be cool!
> 
> Jonathan
>