[ubuntu-uk] Installing Ubuntu 64 on basic laptop

[Alan Bell]

On 24/07/10 12:57, Alan Lord (News) wrote:
> On 24/07/10 12:34, doug livesey wrote:
>   
>> As it's an independent shop I use lots & want to support (support your
>> local bookshop!), I've offered to set it up as dual-boot with Ubuntu to
>> see if they prefer that, and then to either return it to M$ or convert
>> fully to Ubuntu depending on which they prefer.
>> My question is, should I go with the 32 or 64 bit Ubuntu?
>>     
> Hi Doug,
>
> I do not think it will make much difference. But I use 32bit Ubuntu on 
> all my machines. Earlier experiences with codecs and flash support on 
> 64bit has scared me for life!
>
> There is a school of thought that says, as you only have 1G of ram, 
> there is no real benefit to using 64bit and, due to the extra length of 
> all the bytes whizzing around the machine it is actually slower.
>
> Unless you have lots of RAM >4G and/or it's a server I honestly have 
> found no obvious reason to go 64bit on the desktop.
>
> HTH
>
> Al
>
>   
on the other hand, I use 64bit on a few machines. Works just fine for
me, flash and all. I don't think it makes a massive difference though,
you could do either.

There is probably an argument that everyone should move in a 64bit
direction so that one day the 32 bit build can be dropped (you can't
upgrade from 32bit to 64bit without a reinstall) if you want to keep
your install forever, just upgrading each time and upgrading the
hardware as you go, then I would start with 64bit.

Alan.