Ubuntu RAM question

[ratcreature]

I have bought a new laptop which has 4GB of RAM. I have installed Ubuntu on it, the 32bit version, because their website says that was the recommended one on the download page, but eventually I noticed that it only recognized 3GB of RAM. After googling I found that for it to use 4GB either the 64bit version was needed or that you could install some server kernel packages with something called PAE (?) to extend memory. I did the latter because I didn't want to have to start everything from scratch again, when I had already started to get things customized, and I wasn't sure what the lack of recommendation on Ubuntu's part meant for the 64bit version (like I vaguely remember hearing that in the past some programs didn't work or something).

Anyway, this server kernel package thing did work, so now my laptop sees all my memory, but I'm still wondering about this. In the help forum posts I skimmed the general tenor seemed to be in favor just using 64bit on newer systems that have such processors, and somewhat vehemently too (it was my impression that it was one of the repeat topics everyone is impatient and touchy about?), but then why is the 32bit version still the only recommended one when you download, even in the most recent versions?

Comments

[pixel]

I haven't looked into this at all but as a half-assed guess, if you went to download the Desktop version it's because while you can run the 32bit version on 64bit hardware the reverse is not true and most people don't know what the heck they have, so newbies who just go and download the default will be able to run the OS that they download. If you know enough to know that a)you've got the hardware and b)you know you want to run it, then you'll look for the 64bit version.

I don't have 64bit hardware, and a lot of people who go to Ubuntu do so because it can run better than other OSs on older less capable hardware, I don't think it's a totally stupid move on their part. Especially since some people just see that 64 is bigger than 32 and think that it will be better/faster not knowing what it means.

[dreamatdrew]

Yeah, this is exactly the reason. Ubu is firmly in the camp of Distr-it's-easy-to-get-started-with, and 32 bit processors are still more common than 64.

[doldonius]

64bit is newer, reported to have compatibility issues, especially with closed-source software, and its ability to address vast amounts of memory as a single array isn't exactly what you need on a laptop. It's good when you have giant amounts of data to process. But unless you plan to turn your laptop into a number mill, good old 32bit is a much safer bet.

[ratcreature]

That's good to know. It's a low end laptop for 400€ (though vastly better than my last one from early 2005 which died, and it does have a 64bit AMD inside) and I'm not really doing anything high performance. The worst it will face is probably GIMP with a lot of layers, which was somewhat awful on my last laptop, when everything else worked mostly fine. But I do use proprietary drivers for the wireless and for graphic acceleration, also the Flash plugin and acrobat reader, so closed source is an issue.

Also, this laptop came with a Linux installed which I replaced because it was some sort of hampered SuSE Enterprise version that wanted registering and paying for updates or something, but before I replaced it with Ubuntu I had checked their kernel version and drivers and such in case the info might turn out useful had I run into trouble with Ubuntu, and their kernel had "pae" in the name and no 64 in it, so the I suppose the vendor made the same choice, and might have had a reason for it.