Arch Linux

Riyonuk

Member

Registered: 2007-07-24

Posts: 11

32 or 64?

I just bought a new Dell E521, and am eager to put Arch on it. I already have experience with Ubuntu, and ..yeah. I want to know, do I get the 32 or 64 bit versions? Or the i686 or x86 64? And why? Also, do you guys think I can run beryl?

muczyjoe

Member

From: Szeged (Hungary)

Registered: 2007-05-16

Posts: 45

Website

Re: 32 or 64?

I have an athlon64 cpu, and i have tried 64bit distros many time (arch64 too), but i prefer 32 bit.
They say, that if you have more than 3.5 GB ram, you should use 64bit, but else, use 32 bit.
On 64bt, you need emulation packages, also codecs aren't full yet. You need nspluginwrapper for flash, which can rarely hog you cpu (if you have multicore, you also can't notice it... ).
But this is only _my_ opinion.
Beryl: now we have compiz-fusion. The graphic cards (as long as i see in spec) will be of course enough for desktop effects.

Riyonuk

Member

Registered: 2007-07-24

Posts: 11

Re: 32 or 64?

OK, well the computer came with 2GB of ram, and it sounds like 64 has some problems. So I go with i686 (thats 32, right?), and Beryl is compiz fusion? Or does it own it? I thought fusion belonged to emerald. I'm so confused >.>

ise

Developer

From: Karlsruhe / Germany

Registered: 2005-10-06

Posts: 404

Website

Re: 32 or 64?

Just for clarification: The x86_64 version has no problems!!

I have never found a video, which don't play on my x86_64 arch installation. Some proprietary software don't run under the x86_64, that's right. But there are other apps which replace those. My opinion is to test the x86_64 version, and if you are running into too big troubles because of those non-exisiting proprietary software, you can change to the i686 version or you use the lib32 package (which provides libraries for running i686 software, also proprietary).

First there was compiz. Then there was a fork of compiz, called beryl. Now they are together now and called compiz-fusion. emerald is a window decorator, which "draws" your borders around your windows.

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ramjet

Member

Registered: 2005-02-16

Posts: 37

Re: 32 or 64?

another thing to note is that 64 is getting better fast. about 6 months ago when i tried it , it was a nightmare to get stuff I wanted working. Now its a minor annoyance and much software (even proprietary) is being ported to 64 (opera). There doesnt seem to be a big speed increase from running it but it does give you a warm feeling inside.