On 5/12/2010 2:53 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
I'd go with an i386 install unless you have more than 3GB of RAM, in
which case I'd go with an amd64 install (or an i386 with a 686-bigmem
kernel).
The 64-bit vs 32-bit argument is multi-faceted. It gets much deeper than
just addressing more than 3GB of RAM:
* twice the transfer width on the bus
* no memory split issues
* increased virtual address space
* more breathing room for mmap()'d files
* deeper nested system calls with increased stability
* certain applications and operations will execute faster
If you have the hardware, you should definitely be running a 64-bit
operating system, even if you don't have 4GB+ of RAM.