Re: which version of debian to download
As long as you have >= 2 GB RAM you should download AMD64 (otherwise
i386)
The choice is not related to the amount of RAM, but on processor's
architecture and instructions set.
Nowadays, all processors I know for computers are built with 64 bits
architectures, and corresponding instructions sets, which are often
named amd64, probably for history reasons.
Another name you could encounter is x86_64, which simply means that the
processor is of x86 intel family (here, intel is not related to the
trademark, but to the electronic architecture they made popular) with 64
bit instruction set.
i386 is here for compatibility with old... well, very old computers,
and it will not make use of many optimizations which can be made,
resulting in softwares probably slower.
However, seeing performances of our modern processors, the performance
boost will not be measurable for human eye.
When I speak about i386 being old, I should say very old, because
between i386 and x86_64, there has been at least 3 generations: i486,
i586, i686.
I might be wrong on some points, because I am not an expert with
processor architectures, but the ram amount have definitely nothing
relative to the i386/amd64 choice: there has been extensions for i386
(or newer, not sure) processors to handle more than 4Go of RAM memory.
Linux distributions which only uses free softwares have the great power
of being able to compile everything for various processors, with various
architectures options, and it allows performance boosts. However, when
you start to add closed source softwares which does not provide amd64
binaries, you will start to loose those advantages when using them.
As some other people have indicated, Debian version is not limited to
your computer architecture. In fact, it is more like a 2 dimensional
array:
_ first axis is related to your computer's architecture, often based on
the processor: i386 and amd64 are the most common, but there are various
other (Debian wants to be universal)
_ second axis is related to "freshness" of softwares it embed: you have
old stable, stable, testing, unstable and experimental. Here, your
choice will vary depending on your knowledge, the need of stability and
the need or recent features. If you are not experienced and/or need good
stability, choosing stable is the best thing to do. If you discover that
things are a little bit too old, using testing is a better bet. And,
finally, if you are able to manage dependency problems and to find by
yourself why things can be broken, and want the more recent packages, a
mix of unstable/experimental is a nice idea... if you do not need
stability :)
Hope that explanation helped, and is not too wrong (because I do not
claim to be an expert in any science, and errors are human. I'm also
registered to the mailing list to learn :P ) ;)
Reply to: