[PLUG] Dell and Ubuntu

[Michael M.]

On Mon, 2007-05-28 at 16:22 -0700, Pomeroy Lab wrote:
> You are right and wrong. Linux 32 bit drivers are not as compatible as Windows 32 bit drivers because there are more of them. However when you can't install Windows VISTA 64 bit on your laptop because if you did the drivers probably would not be available and you would not even be able to connect to the internet or play sounds. You may not even get your video to work resulting in a Blue Screen. Now those 32 bit drivers for Linux we were talking about well they work just fine for Linux 64 bit. Why? Because they are open source and can just be recompiled. 64 bit runs way faster on a 64 or 128 bit computer. Now Microsoft and computer manufacturers know this and so they only install Vista 32 bit on their new computers. Sure they should run faster but because they only have Windows 32 bit on them they run as slow as the computers 3 years ago. Most people don't understand this. You on the other hand have used both Ubuntu 64 bit and 32 bit so you know full well what runs faster.
>  On a laptop this can be interesting anyway because most laptop hard drives are slow.
> 


I installed Arch64 on my desktop for about two weeks.  The only thing
that seemed slightly faster (and I do mean "slightly," not "way faster")
than on my 32-bit installation of same was encoding audio to flac and
ogg.  My guess is that video encoding would have been slightly faster,
too, but I don't do much of that.  OTOH, the ripping process (from audio
CDs) was no faster, and that's what takes the most time anyway.
Everything else that I use my computer for was not perceptibly faster.
I'm sure there is plenty of usage that benefits from a 64-bit
environment on 64-bit hardware, but I don't have a need for it.  For
day-to-day "(stereo)-typical home usage" stuff, I can't see any
advantage of using a 64-bit installation, and plenty of pain that goes
with the lack of gain (some multimedia codecs, flash and other
proprietary bits-and-pieces that aren't available in 64-bit Linux or are
difficult to set-up).  It's not worth it, IMO.


-- 
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson