Do I need 64 bit?

[Richard]

The quickest answer is to say that there is no plan for a 64bit MX-14.

Which makes me very happy. :) More emphasis on keeping it working well.

I have a mix of netbooks for work, old PCs in my wife's preschool, and my 64bit desktop.
I run 32-bit on everything. It simplifies support considerably.

I have tried 64 bit OSs on 64 bit hardware but on my usage pattern it offers no discernible benefits.

[DBeckett]

 
I suspect that most users in most cases would be unable to pinpoint which architecture they were using based on performance.

[entropyfoe]

With the pae kernel available, I think the main reason for 64 bit is taken away .
Not sure with MX, but in Windows XP, 32 bit limited you to about 3 Gig of RAM.

I do like , and use more than that now with MX-14.

Code: Select all

top - 21:39:22 up 16 days, 2 min,  4 users,  load average: 1.21, 1.55, 1.60
Tasks: 218 total,   3 running, 214 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
%Cpu(s): 13.9 us,  0.5 sy,  0.0 ni, 85.6 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:  16526636 total,  7105464 used,  9421172 free,   289672 buffers
KiB Swap: 17678332 total,        0 used, 17678332 free,  4754152 cached

[lucky9]

Transcoding and such will see a noticeable improvement in processing time. But normal browsing, etc. you won't see a difference that a normal human can tell is faster or slower. If you do do a lot of transcoding etc. then you can keep a 64 bit OS for that sort of thing.

Eventually of course the main Desktop Environments will be complex enough to benefit from 64 bit operating systems. But that's still a fair amount of time away.
By then of course we'll be talking about 128 bit vs 64 bit.

[joany]

With the pae kernel available, I think the main reason for 64 bit is taken away .
Not sure with MX, but in Windows XP, 32 bit limited you to about 3 Gig of RAM.

I do like , and use more than that now with MX-14.

Code: Select all

top - 21:39:22 up 16 days, 2 min,  4 users,  load average: 1.21, 1.55, 1.60
Tasks: 218 total,   3 running, 214 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
%Cpu(s): 13.9 us,  0.5 sy,  0.0 ni, 85.6 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem:  16526636 total,  7105464 used,  9421172 free,   289672 buffers
KiB Swap: 17678332 total,        0 used, 17678332 free,  4754152 cached

Wow! With 16GB available and 7GB used, your machine must be screamin' fast with MX-14 on it.

[entropyfoe]

Joany,

Yup, it is screaming fast!

My wife calls this my "supercomputer" which is pretty accurate. I make comparison to the Cray YMP I think that had 4-8 cores, similar RAM. My old buddy at Boeing had to get a security clearance to run jobs on such a machine back in the late 80s early 90s. And now we have this sitting next to the desk !

Between the 8 cores, SSD, and big RAM, everything pretty much happens instantly. And what is best is the machine is nearly silent ! A quiet cooler, one slow 120mm case fan, and the fanless video in a good case does the job.

AMD and Linux do a great job of throttling cores back when not needed. Keeps it quiet, and at idle consuming about 65 Watts. I have swappiness set to 1, so it rarely ever touches swap and it recovers from sleep in <10 seconds, so there is no need to reboot hardly ever !

I am proud of this machine, and it has another invention I made. I call it RAWPOD, by analogy to RAID. The system has a 1TB drive for data, and another internal 2TB drive for back up of data. But RAWPOD stands for Redundant Array With Powered Off Disks. The 2TB has a key switch that turns off the +5 and +12V red and yellow power supply wires to that drive. So most of the time it sits powered off, immune from power surges, accidental deletions, head crashes etc. I turn the switch and run LuckyBackup, and then power it off. I think this is a mechanically safer environment fro a drive than an external enclosure (cooler, shock mounted etc).

The only slowdowns are when I do Audacity compression/exports, filters, or other media encoding.
-Jay

[dolphin_oracle]

I haven't tried media encoding, as my antix 64bit set up is still where I do my video editing. I find myself using MX for daily stuff more and more. The whisker menu setup is too nice!

to me, 32bit is still the lingua franca of the computing world. There are still a lot of apps (and printer drivers, brother...) that need 32bit libraries anyway. Heck, even steam is 32 bit.

[lucky9]

Sounds like the 16 bit vs 32 bit discussions a few years back. I'll agree that 32 is the lingua franca of current computing. I'm also glad that provision has been made for running 32 bit software on 64 bit operating systems in the 'Nix world.

[seb275]

Let's be straight here: MX will never challenge major xfce distros like Mint, Xubuntu or whatever without a 64bit edition. Even the forever 32bit PCLOS have been pushed by the community to release 64bit editions.

[Jerry3904]

Let's be even straighter: what the major distros you mention have that MX-14 does not is huge financial and personnel resources.