f20 - difference between i386 and x86_64 distros

[Richard Vickery]

| From: "Robert Moskowitz" <rgm at htt-consult.com>
| To: "Community support for Fedora users" <users at lists.fedoraproject.org>
| Sent: Saturday, 18 January, 2014 20:13:26
| Subject: f20 - difference between i386 and x86_64 distros
| 
| As I have mentioned, my x86_64 install on my Lenovo is a bit of a
| hack.
| Hopefully things will be better for f21, but meanwhile...
| 
| I am continuing to have problems.  Most recently, Gnome keeps
| crashing
| even without suspend attempts.
| 
| Soooo, I DO have a drive with f20 i386 installed, and I am seriously
| thinking of falling back to it.  "All" I have to do, is book from it,
| sync my files (mail mostly) from the x86_64 drive, and apply updates.
| 
| But what do I loose running i386 on a 64 bit system?  That is the
| serious question here.
| 

Having run i386 since I began using Linux in 1998 and recently switched over to x86_64 at the end of 2012 / the middle of 2013, I used to say that Linux was a tank, that "you can do back-flips in Linux; you could drop a bomb on it and it would keep running". i386 will not crash - it is extremely unlikely event. The likelihood of an i386 machine crashing is maybe 0.25 percent, in my unscientific opinion.

Since my switch-over I can't really say that I've gained anything. I don't think that I can put the demands on the machine as I used to. The reason I switched is to contribute more to this group. This I would lose if I went back to i386. Other than that, I can't say that there is anything to lose.

If you wanted to stay with the x86 structure, we might be able to help you with the coding issues in Gnome, but if the decision is to go to i386, you may be happier with the computer. I suppose the question is your purpose, or  use, of the computer: do you write documents, spreadsheets, presentations, writing code, or do you want to help Fedora - the group of volunteers - build our ever-evolving OS?

2 cents from one with experience in the issue,
Richard