[PLUG] 32 versus 64 bit reading list suggestions

[Rich Shepard]

On Mon, 7 Sep 2020, Richard Owlett wrote:

> I have two underlying questions:
>  1. As everything I currently use runs fine, what would I gain by
>     switching to amd64 flavor?

My 2 cents worth:

If everything you do runs well on a 32-bit installtion, stay there. But be
aware that a number of applications are dropping their 32-bit builds and you
lose nothing by switching now to only 64-bit installations and applications.

>  2.What 32 bit utilities are there to identify the hardware
>    capabilities of a particular machine?

Not sure I understand what capabilities have you concerned. But, lspci (a
utility for displaying information about PCI buses in the system and devices
connected to them), lsusb (a utility for displaying information about USB
buses in the system and the devices connected to them), and lshw (a small
tool to extract detailed information on the hardware configuration of the
machine. It can report exact memory configuration, firmware version, main‐
board configuration, CPU version and speed, cache configuration, bus speed,
etc. on DMI-capable x86 or IA-64 systems). Probably others, too.

Germane to hardware capabilities I recommend looking at the motherboard
manual for a start.

HTH,

Rich