Any tips for an Arch 64 system?

**K.Mandla** · January 29th, 2008

At long last, after about a year of sub-1Ghz hardware, I've got my hands on an AMD64 and I plan on installing the 64-bit version of Arch soon (probably Ubuntu first, just to get my hands dirty, then try Arch64 fresh).

Any suggestions? Anybody using 64-bit that has a tip for me? Or should I just jump in and wallow around in it?

**PurposeOfReason** · January 29th, 2008

I think you'll find nothing but speed different. Flash takes a good five minutes if that. Once that is there, nothing can stop you.

**fwojciec** · January 29th, 2008

You'll be fine with either version. I had both installed in parallel for a while and eventually I settled for the i686 version. To me there were no perceptible benefits of using a 64bit system, in fact I had a feeling that it was running slower than my 32bit install -- performance differences were all in the placebo range, in either case.

What was definitely the case was the fact that the 64bit system would use more memory compared to 32bit running the same apps. Not a huge difference, but this behavior was very consistent.

If you go for Arch64 I'd suggest setting up 32bit apps using the chroot method rather than lib32 packages from aur -- it seems like a more elegant solution to me though both methods work fine in my experience.

**aeto** · January 29th, 2008

i really have to agree on that - Placebo.

**K.Mandla** · January 30th, 2008

Originally Posted by fwojciec

You'll be fine with either version. I had both installed in parallel for a while and eventually I settled for the i686 version. To me there were no perceptible benefits of using a 64bit system, in fact I had a feeling that it was running slower than my 32bit install -- performance differences were all in the placebo range, in either case.

What was definitely the case was the fact that the 64bit system would use more memory compared to 32bit running the same apps. Not a huge difference, but this behavior was very consistent.

If you go for Arch64 I'd suggest setting up 32bit apps using the chroot method rather than lib32 packages from aur -- it seems like a more elegant solution to me though both methods work fine in my experience.

Interesting, thanks for that. I wouldn't have guessed that to be the case, but I'll try it out and see what I get.

Thanks everybody.

**K.Mandla** · January 30th, 2008

Just a little update. I decided to go for the jugular and went straight to Arch. No Ubuntu yet.

So far it's a dream machine for me. All the little tweaks and perks I'm used to are twice as speedy. Very smooth, and no real issues yet ... that weren't my own mistakes.

Cheers, all.