Andrew Robinson wrote:
Well I made the rough decision last night and switched back to 32b. After reading some benchmarks it didn't look like 64b was going to benefit me much. This is a home desktop computer so the 32b will fit me fine. Just a shame to give up the extra functionality. Perhaps in a few years I may try 64b again when more libraries and software bundles are packaged as 64b. Until then I thought that it would be nice if things "just worked". I maintain a couple of slackware boxes, and it would be nice to finally have one box that is extremely low maintenance.
32bit may indeed be the way to go for you - for now. I still recommend using a 64-bit kernel, while having everything else 32-bit. First, you get a small speedup of the kernel itself. This is hardly noticable as the PC shouldn't spend much time on the kernel anyway. Much more important is that the 64-bit kernel can hand out more memory to the processes than a 32-bit kernel can, because it hides itself outside the 32-bit memory range that the applications live in. This could make a difference if you have 2GB or more memory, the difference between swapping and _not_ swapping can be felt sometimes. Of course, only if you have a process that need so much memory. Helge Hafting