Recommendations...

[Jerry Feldman]

On 06/15/2010 01:21 PM, Gerry Hull wrote:
> Folks,
>
> I just picked up an Lenovo X61 laptop the other day for a very good
> price.  This 3lb unit is a dual-core T7300 at 2.6GHz, 4GB Ram and 100GB
> disk.  
>
> I want to run Linux as the core operating system, and use VMWare to
> load Windows for my Windows work.
>
> I was thinking of Ubuntu 10.04.  My question is should I do 32 or 64
> bit?   If I go 32-bit I will not be able to use all the ram, and if I
> go 64-bit I may not have all the drivers.
>
> What are your thoughts/recommendations?
>
Without a doubt, use 64-bit. Linux has supported 64-bit since 1994 when
the DEC Alpha version was available.
I have been using 64-bit on my Linux laptop (an aging HP NX6125) for 5
years.
Additionally,  you can use either Virtualbox or KVM for free. Windows
runs fine under VMWare, Virtualbox, and KVM. One thing you want to check
is if the X61 BIOS is able to enable Virtualization. The Intel T7300
does have virtualization support. Both VMWare and Virtualbox run fine
without hardware virtualization support, but you can't run 64-bit guest
OS without the hardware support. KVM requires hardware support, but you
can run QEMU/KVM without it. My laptop is an older AMD Turion without
virtualization support, but Virtualbox runs fine with 32-bit Windows XP
and Fedora 12 guest OS's and Ubuntu 10.04 host OS. While I think very
highly of VMWare, I have found Virtualbox to be very good on the
desktop.  At work we do use VMWare on our Windows XP laptops with RHEL
5.2 guests. All are Lenovo. So, the only issue is whether hardware
virtualization can be enabled, and this must be enabled in the BIOS as
it is nearly always disabled by default.

The only driver issue I am aware of these days is the Adobe Flash 64-bit
plugin for firefox. It can be downloaded directly from Adobe, but I'm
not sure if Ubuntu has it in its non-free repos. Most, if not all 32-bit
applications run fine under a 64-bit Linux.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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