On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 1:02 PM, david <gnome@hawaii.rr.com> wrote:

On 02/04/2013 11:29 PM, James Stone wrote:

Is there any advantage in using a 64 bit distro for audio? Do the
advantages outweigh the difficulties?

I'm expecting a new computer to be delivered today and am trying to
decide what to install...

What difficulties? I run both 32- and 64-bit Linuxes, and have no difficulties with either one.

I can't imagine why anyone would run a 32-bit Linux on a modern processor. Virtually every processor made today is 64-bit. Even the little old dual-core ARM processor in my wife's netbook is 64-bit!

64-bit gives programs access to more on-chip registers, and removes the need for the silly physical address extension (PAE) stuff.

It surprises me that none of you seem to remember ~2007. The question of whether to use 32-bit linux on a 64-bit processor is just a bit of superstition left over from the days when 64-bit linux had limited compatibility.

The solution to most desktop users back then was: just run a 32-bit PAE version of linux. Yeah, really that was just about 6 years ago :)