[sf-lug] use 32 or 64 bit on 64 bit capable hardware: Re: installing minimal debian and building on that

[Akkana Peck]

Michael Paoli writes:
> Another factor to consider.
> For many/most distributions, support of 32 bit ("i386"), etc.
> is waning, or has already been dropped.
> Debian, however, supports more distributions than any other
> Linux distribution, so Debian may continue to support 32 bit
> "i386" for quite some while to come, but even given that,
> as things move more and more to 64 bit, 32 bit will become
> less well supported 

My machines are fairly low RAM (which isn't normally a problem for
me because I run mostly lightweight software), so I was doing fine
on 32-bit Debian ... but I was feeling more and more orphaned.
Nobody runs 32-bit, nobody tests it, and if you need help it's
hard to find anybody who's tried it recently.

When I finally upgraded one of my machines to 64-bit Debian (the
stable version in both cases, though it was a while ago and might
have been Jessie rather than Stretch), my biggest surprise was that
the set of software was different. For instance, Python's built-in
libraries came in different versions, and some scripts that had been
working fine on 32-bit had to be updated for 64. Other scripts that
depended on PyGTK didn't work at all because PyGTK wasn't available
on 64-bit. The 32 to 64 upgrade was a much bigger change than I'd
been expecting and I was busy for a week or two getting everything
working again.

I also discovered that some third-party binary packages support
32-bit much better than 64. For Google Earth, Debian has a package
called "googleearth-package" that downloads Google Earth and
installs it. It was working for me under Debian 32, but I've never
managed to get it working under Debian 64 even with 32-bit
compatibility libraries installed. (It's probably possible if you
try hard enough; I just decided after fighting it for a few hours
that I didn't need Google's binary package that badly.)

That sounds like an argument for going with 32-bit, but it's not;
my point is more that switching may be more difficult than you expect,
so if you can go with 64-bit from the beginning, it'll probably
save you some time in the long run and you won't waste time on
a poorly-supported orphan OS.

        ...Akkana