Member Avatar for Eric HRF

Well I've got my new Dell 1850 with Dual 64 bit Xeons. Now the big question? 32 bit or 64 bit? I don't want to limit my options tomarrow by using yesterdays OS. Oh yeah, my Buddy and I are leaning towards CentOS 64 disto.

Eric HRF

  • 6 Contributors
  • 5 Replies
  • 228 Views
  • 5 Months Discussion Span
  • Latest Post Latest Post by Willis

Dani AI

Generated

For — short, practical guidance that fills gaps left by the replies above and lets you make a safe choice without guessing.

  • Check vendor/third-party support first. Inventory the exact apps, kernel modules and closed-source drivers you rely on and confirm 64-bit builds or source you can recompile. 's note about distro/kernel nuances is relevant here — make sure the distro you pick officially supports the kernel/userland combo you plan to run.
  • Remember pointer and ABI changes. Moving to 64-bit doubles pointer size (4 -> 8 bytes) and can increase the memory footprint of pointer-heavy services (JVMs, in-memory DB structures, many-process web servers). That can reduce the apparent benefit of larger address space on RAM-constrained boxes.
  • Expect performance differences to be workload-dependent. Compute-heavy, crypto, or large-integer/FP code often benefits from 64-bit registers; I/O-bound or small-footprint services may see little change. Profiling beats guessing.
  • Virtualization and future-proofing. A 64-bit host lets you run 64-bit guests natively; 32-bit guests still run fine on either host. Consider whether you want that flexibility.

Quick checks to run on the machine (run as a normal user):

uname -m
getconf LONG_BIT
lscpu
file /sbin/init
file $(which your-important-binary)

Action plan:

  1. Make a short compatibility matrix (app/driver -> 32-bit/64-bit availability).
  2. Boot a 64-bit live image or test-install to a spare partition and exercise the exact workloads and drivers you need.
  3. If anything critical is missing, keep a 32-bit fallback or rebuild drivers; migration usually means a fresh install anyway, so plan backups.

Tying the thread together: and were right to focus on use case; and favor 64-bit for future use; warned about distro/kernel details. Use the checklist and the live-test approach to pick the option that actually works for your environment.

Recommended Answers

All 5 Replies

Member Avatar for Member #33065

Really depends on what you plan on doing with the server. 64-bit doesn't do much for you unless you are planning on addressing huge amounts of memory or very large numbers.

Member Avatar for zeroth

the 64 sounds good...

Member Avatar for movielad

CentOS is a decent distribution. It should be noted that you should be using the ia32e (EMT64) kernel rather than the x86_64 kernel if you're going down the CentOS 3.x route. I'm not too sure about Centos 4, though.

M.

Member Avatar for jindalarpan

hey
i m not having information about that OS you have mentioned (centOS) but can say this much if ur having 64 bit processor u should install 64 bit OS on it to make the proper utilization of resources and better performance

Member Avatar for Willis

I have to echo Nicentral on this one as well, it all depends on what your plans are with the system. No since wasting the extra $$ on the 64 bit OS if your not going to be using it.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.