Re: Wich Debian system with Intel Core 2 CPU: i386 or amd64?
On Sun, Dec 23, 2007 at 12:35:45PM +0000, Paul Csanyi wrote:
> I have installed Debian Etch on my hardware with Intel Core 2 CPU.
>
> In the repository I have linux-image-2.6.18-5-amd64 and now I have it
> installed.
>
> I think I can use it with Debian Etch system, and don't must download and
> install the debian amd64 distribution, right?
>
> For what reason should I download and install debian amd64 distribution?
>
Whether to use amd64, i386 with a 64-bit kernel, or i386 with a 32-bit
kernel totally depends on what you want to do. Whether you get a
performance increase with amd64 depends on what you are running and how
much memory you want to use.
If you want to use e.g. nVidia binary video module, you are limited to
either amd64 or i386 with a 32-bit kernel.
If you have more than 2-3 GB ram, you need amd64.
If your software will speed up with more registers, use amd64.
If your box is only to be used for web-browising flash-required sites,
just use i386.
For Etch, you can't run flash (only available as a 32-bit plugin) with
a 64-bit browser. For Lenny, there is a wrapper to allow this.
For me, on Etch, the best answer is to use amd64 for most things, then I
set up an i386 chroot that has the iceweasel browser + flash, and run it
with schroot. Very slick.
Whether you notice any of the speed differences between them depends on
what you do. The only thing that I do to put my CPU usage over 10%
(i.e. less than 90% idle) for more than 2 seconds, is run top with an
interval of 0.1 seconds, gzip my backup tarball, or resize and enhance a
thumbnail to 1024x768 in DigiKam.
I hope this helps you to decide. More info can be found on the
Debian-amd64 list archives.
Doug.
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