basic questions about Ubuntu install

[Sylvanas]

Originally posted by: VinDSL

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
Have a look at this article that compares the two and you can see 64bit is faster in nearly all cases [...]

Thanks! That article proves my point(s). It's a matter of reading comprehension!

Would you like me to guide you through it?

What is there not to see? I see what you quoted but all that does is prove that 64bit is indeed faster, sometimes not by much but it is and it's stable- whats not to like.

Adobe produces only a 32-bit version of Flash that must be run through a Linux compatibility layer. That layer is flawless in terms of stability, but it does slow things down a bit as can be seen. To show you the future, we ran Adobe's latest 64-bit Flash 10 alpha release, which you can see provides a healthy performance boost.

Although we certainly wouldn't recommend average users to use that 64-bit alpha, we should at least say that it worked just fine for us in our tests - don't let its "alpha" tag fool you into thinking it will take down your desktop.

Firefox's Javascript performance gets a 13% performance boost under Google's V8 Benchmark.

This one is a no-brainer: 3D rendering is an easy win for 64-bit processors because it's so heavily CPU bound.

Then in conclusion...

Putting aside the issue of Flash for a moment, moving from 32-bit to 64-bit is pretty much painless. In fact, you can't tell the difference without running uname -a in a terminal - all the programs you're used to are likely to run identically, and ultimately it's only a matter of time before x86-64 becomes the standard.

At this point, using a 64-bit distro is rather like enabling hyperthreading on your CPU - you get a free performance boost for your PC, and if that means you can put off upgrading it for another six months then it's an easy win. As we said earlier, it's a nice bonus. Sure, 5-10% isn't a lot, but when it's across your whole desktop and comes at no cost, why not? If you do use an application that isn't in Ubuntu's repositories, check around first to see if other users have any experience of running it in 64-bit.

Fact: Flash has a 64bit component that works fine
Fact: 64bit is the same or faster in the benchmarks above
Fact: Most software now has a 64bit component and if it doesn't the 32bit version will run just fine.

I see no reason not to use 64bit. It's either faster or the same as 32bit and flash support is there with a full release coming. Sorry to break it to you but theres more to 64bit than flash, so many more memory and CPU intensive tasks show marked improvements from using 64bit and it would be silly to discount that fact.

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: Sylvanas
I see no reason not to use 64bit [...]

You might consider taking alpha lipoic acid 2-3 times a day, if you can stand the clarity it will bring to your life.

 

[Nothinman]

You might consider taking alpha lipoic acid 2-3 times a day, if you can stand the clarity it will bring to your life.

Is this how you have conversations in real life? Right now it kind of seem like talking to the fortune command, the reponses rarely have anything to do with what was just said.

But anyway, you've listed 1 thing that doesn't work for you so you've got 1 valid reason not to use AMD64 Linux. However, I doubt it will affect most people since all the flash stuff I do works just fine. And on top of that, it's not terribly difficult to either run a full 32-bit build of FF+Flash on AMD64 or use nspluginwrapper and use the 32-bit plugin in a 64-bit browser. Running a i386 distro isn't the only solution although it might be the simplest and also probably the worst.