7 ms·

I am surprised there are still so many i386 installations. I have been running mostly amd64 for quite some years now. Both for severs and desktops. I know for s

by jeltz 14y ago

I am surprised there are still so many i386 installations. I have been running mostly amd64 for quite some years now. Both for severs and desktops. I know for sure the servers my job bought in 2007 ran amd64.

abrahamsen 14y ago
The number of i386 installations have been relatively constant since 2007. All the growth has been in amd64. I guess Debian is the kind of distribution you put on a computer that is going to to sit in a room and run the same non-taxing services for years without attention.
- VLM 14y ago
  More accurate to cross out "the same non-taxing services" but otherwise basically correct.
  - abrahamsen 14y ago
    With "non-taxing" I meant "services whose load will not justify a hardware update for the next 6+ years".
- dfc 14y ago
  Did you mean: I guess Debian is the kind of distribution you put on a computer that you want to sit in a room and run for years without a problem.
anemic 14y ago
I'm running several debian i386 virtual machines. I don't see a point running 64-bit os if the memory usage stays well below 3G. And last time I ran UnixBench on squeeze i386 was still faster than amd64. On bare metal it's a different story, though, but I still would think that there are more virtual servers than real ones.
- zanny 14y ago
  When you run 64 bit it assumes all the SSE extensions, the presence of the extra register sets, and everything between the 386 and 686 being available. It almost always performs better with software compiled to utilize the extra goods, even if it has slightly larger memory footprints.
  - anemic 14y ago
    you're absolutely correct there. it might be that the performance difference I'm seeing is caused by the hypervisor or something else.
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    Generally yes, you almost always see a performance increase with all the things x86-64 brings. But the increased cache pressure from 64-bit pointers is a real downside and the reason that pretty much every other architecture suffers in performance when it goes to 64 bits. If something about his workload makes it especially sensetive to cache pressure he could very well see a performance penalty, and I'd say heavy virtualization would actually make that more likely.
- vegardx 14y ago
  I'd say you waste time taking a conscious decision between 64-bit and 32-bit, there are few good reasons to not just go with 64-bit, and dwelling on it just wastes time. Do you have any metrics to support your claim that 32-bit Debian is faster than the exact same 64-bit distro? And what difference does virtual versus physical machines make? Heck, you can even run virtual 64-bit guests on a 32-bit host machine if the CPU supports either Intel-VT or AMD-V.
  - anemic 14y ago
    I did find the results I got but without any further explanation they are not very useful: http://pastebin.com/WjiZNiSg http://pastebin.com/WjiZNiSg But interpreting those results indicates to me that there are possible problems with this platform where f.ex. file copy performance is ~50% faster on 32bit than 64bit. To me just assuming that there is no difference and go with instinct without anything concrete evidence is the wrong way to go.
ars 14y ago
I'm running i386 despite having a 64 bit processor (and kernel) because it's the latest installation in a series of upgrades of an install from many years ago. The new multiarch support should finally allow me to change that.
hendi_ 14y ago
I consider myself a well versed user and just found out recently that my Core 2 Duo laptop (which I bought in 2007) supports amd64. Have been running i386 all the while, and have even explicitly downloaded the x86 version of Fedora when they presented me the x64 download by default...
- dysoco 14y ago
  I have a Core 2 Duo laptop from 2007-2008 and yes, runs x86_64 perfectly.
  - potkor 14y ago
    Intel chips have supported it pretty soon after AMD, since the latter-day Pentium 4s (from 2004 on).
    - daeken 14y ago
      Not true -- the original Core series was x86-only, with x64 coming in the Core 2 line.
      - Symmetry 14y ago
        No, it's quite true. Some of the Prescott model Pentium 4's released in '05 supported x64, but the Yonah Core processors released in '06 didn't. That's mostly because Yonah was only intended to be a mobile chip. When it ended up being better in many ways than the Pentium 4 Intel quickly released the 64-bit Core 2 as a successor to both.
- raverbashing 14y ago
  cat /proc/cpuinfo If there's a 'lm' in flags, it works in 64-bit mode
rplnt 14y ago
I used to run x64 but now I'm back on x86 with Linux (I'm still using 64bit windows). The reason is problems with various "external" (not from repos) libraries, most prominently Flash.

by jeltz 14y ago

abrahamsen 14y ago

The number of i386 installations have been relatively constant since 2007. All the growth has been in amd64. I guess Debian is the kind of distribution you put on a computer that is going to to sit in a room and run the same non-taxing services for years without attention.

VLM 14y ago
More accurate to cross out "the same non-taxing services" but otherwise basically correct.
- abrahamsen 14y ago
  With "non-taxing" I meant "services whose load will not justify a hardware update for the next 6+ years".
dfc 14y ago
Did you mean: I guess Debian is the kind of distribution you put on a computer that you want to sit in a room and run for years without a problem.

anemic 14y ago

I'm running several debian i386 virtual machines. I don't see a point running 64-bit os if the memory usage stays well below 3G. And last time I ran UnixBench on squeeze i386 was still faster than amd64. On bare metal it's a different story, though, but I still would think that there are more virtual servers than real ones.

zanny 14y ago
When you run 64 bit it assumes all the SSE extensions, the presence of the extra register sets, and everything between the 386 and 686 being available. It almost always performs better with software compiled to utilize the extra goods, even if it has slightly larger memory footprints.
- anemic 14y ago
  you're absolutely correct there. it might be that the performance difference I'm seeing is caused by the hypervisor or something else.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  Generally yes, you almost always see a performance increase with all the things x86-64 brings. But the increased cache pressure from 64-bit pointers is a real downside and the reason that pretty much every other architecture suffers in performance when it goes to 64 bits. If something about his workload makes it especially sensetive to cache pressure he could very well see a performance penalty, and I'd say heavy virtualization would actually make that more likely.
vegardx 14y ago
I'd say you waste time taking a conscious decision between 64-bit and 32-bit, there are few good reasons to not just go with 64-bit, and dwelling on it just wastes time. Do you have any metrics to support your claim that 32-bit Debian is faster than the exact same 64-bit distro? And what difference does virtual versus physical machines make? Heck, you can even run virtual 64-bit guests on a 32-bit host machine if the CPU supports either Intel-VT or AMD-V.
- anemic 14y ago
  I did find the results I got but without any further explanation they are not very useful: http://pastebin.com/WjiZNiSg http://pastebin.com/WjiZNiSg But interpreting those results indicates to me that there are possible problems with this platform where f.ex. file copy performance is ~50% faster on 32bit than 64bit. To me just assuming that there is no difference and go with instinct without anything concrete evidence is the wrong way to go.

ars 14y ago

I'm running i386 despite having a 64 bit processor (and kernel) because it's the latest installation in a series of upgrades of an install from many years ago. The new multiarch support should finally allow me to change that.

hendi_ 14y ago

I consider myself a well versed user and just found out recently that my Core 2 Duo laptop (which I bought in 2007) supports amd64. Have been running i386 all the while, and have even explicitly downloaded the x86 version of Fedora when they presented me the x64 download by default...

dysoco 14y ago
I have a Core 2 Duo laptop from 2007-2008 and yes, runs x86_64 perfectly.
- potkor 14y ago
  Intel chips have supported it pretty soon after AMD, since the latter-day Pentium 4s (from 2004 on).
  - daeken 14y ago
    Not true -- the original Core series was x86-only, with x64 coming in the Core 2 line.
    - Symmetry 14y ago
      No, it's quite true. Some of the Prescott model Pentium 4's released in '05 supported x64, but the Yonah Core processors released in '06 didn't. That's mostly because Yonah was only intended to be a mobile chip. When it ended up being better in many ways than the Pentium 4 Intel quickly released the 64-bit Core 2 as a successor to both.
raverbashing 14y ago
cat /proc/cpuinfo If there's a 'lm' in flags, it works in 64-bit mode

rplnt 14y ago

I used to run x64 but now I'm back on x86 with Linux (I'm still using 64bit windows). The reason is problems with various "external" (not from repos) libraries, most prominently Flash.