What's the downsides of Running Ubuntu 9.10 32bit on AMD64 Processor

Question

I was thinking about installing Ubuntu 9.10 32bit on a DELL Inspiron 1501 with 64bit processor Laptop. Since It's was real pain to me to run Java Browser plugin, Flash Plugin, J2ME Toolkit, and many other tools. But It was 90% OK with me.

This was Ubuntu 8.10 (a year ago), And now the Ubuntu 9.10 came and I'm thinking about installing the 32 bit on it and get rid of the pain.

Is there a downside for that?? considering that the display card is not supported now so exclude this from your calculation, I will never play REAL games on it and I'm not a big fan of Compiz effects.

I'm not here to ask about the performance (which is about 15%+ for the 64bit only), I just want compatibility!

Answer 1

For what it's worth, the Flash 10 64-bit alpha solves the previous disaster situation with 32-on-64 Flash. I don't have any troubles on 64-bit (although I don't run the Java plugin as I have always hated it). The last thing on my system that still requires ia32-libs is the unfortunate Skype (which is nasty even on 32-bit). Looking forward to getting rid of that. But yeah, if:

I just want compatibility!

Then 32-bit is the obvious choice.

Answer 2

There isn't anything wrong with running a 32-bit x86 OS on an AMD64 CPU. The primary disadvantage is that you just won't be able to use more than 4 GB of RAM unless you enable PAE.

Answer 3

No downsides. I'm doing just that: running Ubuntu 9.10 32 bit on a 64 bit laptop.

Answer 4

I haven't had any issues running 32-bit Ubuntu on my work-issued Inspiron 1501.