32 or 64 bit ubuntu

[Marc Lanctot]

On 10/03/09 04:23 PM, jim ruxton wrote:
> Thanks to everyone who helped me with deciding on a laptop. I ended up
> getting this one at Canada Computers :
> http://www.canadacomputers.com/index.php?do=ShowProduct&cmd=pd&pid=020863&cid=896.645
>
> Now I am eager to put linux on it. I will use Kubuntu. I'm trying to
> decide if I should go with 32 bit or 64 bit. I use a lot of programs
> that don't come with the package. Many of which will be 32 bit. I read
> somewhere that I can use the -force-architecture flag to install 32 bit
> apps. I'm just wondering if having 64 bit will be more of a hassle than
> it is worth. Also considering triple booting vista, 64 bit kubuntu, 32
> bit kubntu . Has anyone been down these roads before? Any sage advice?

I'm really sorry about the third post in a row, but I reread something 
again I can reply to. (I promise I'll READ the emails before replying in 
the future!!)

I have done the triple boot with Windows, 32-bit Linux, and 64-bit 
Linux. It works, but you have to be careful about the /boot partition 
shared by the two Linux installs. If you don't share the boot partition 
then you'll have to keep merging the two separate grub.conf every time a 
kernel update is done. If you do share them then you have to make sure 
there are no naming conflicts.. eg a 64-bit and 32-bit kernel image may 
be different but have the same name (vmlinuz-2.6.27-generic or 
something) so files get overwritten when you do an update. There may be 
apps or some bootloader grub.conf tricks you can do to avoid this... 
anybody?

FYI, I shared my data partition in both Linux installs, where I mounted 
/home and other data like my mp3s, web pages, database files, and svn 
repos and it worked fine.. so there was only a few GB of wasted overlap 
between the two Linux installs.

Marc

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