Recommendations...

[Flaherty, Patrick]

> From: gnhlug-discuss-bounces at mail.gnhlug.org 
> [mailto:gnhlug-discuss-bounces at mail.gnhlug.org] On Behalf Of 
> Gerry Hull
> Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 1:22 PM
> 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?

 If you are going to be using this as a desktop and not a server, I will
disagree with most and tell you to go 32 bit. I've never seen anyone
demonstrate that the PAE kernels take that much of a performance hit.
Flash 64bit is going away and java 64bit plugins for browsers are buggy
for anything non-trivial. I've been using kvm for my virtualization
needs. It's not as fast as virtual box, doesn't do some of the cool usb2
pass thru, but it's part of the kernel proper and has been more stable
for me.

If it was a server, and you were less likely to be trying to get binary
blobs of crap to run, I'd say go 64, but for average home desktop use,
32bit is still the path of less resistance.

Patrick