Recommendations...

[Derek Atkins]

"Flaherty, Patrick" <pflaherty at wsi.com> writes:

>> 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.

I need 64-bit on my desktop because I need to run mock in both 32- and
64-bit environments in order to run (and test) code.  Using a
cross-compiler doesn't cut it.  I also run VMware (Workstation); I'm not
sure I could run 64-bit OSes if my host is a 32-bit system.

In *general* the 64-bit desktop seems to work okay....  Except for the
fact that it's hard to find a 64-bit firefox flash plugin.

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available