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

[Alex Kleider]

Thanks, Akkana.  I'm leaning more towards 64bit but will wait to hear 
any further advice that might come in from Rick and/or Michael (or 
anyone else for that matter.)  One of the many virtues of Linux as I 
understand it is that it does work well on old hardware so mine must be 
an issue faced by many.
Cheers,
Alex

On 2018-12-08 13:56, Akkana Peck wrote:
> 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
> 
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