Quick Architecture Question.

[fr0k1d]

I want to know the difference between the i686, x84_64, and dual architectures. Which one would be best for an AMD Phenom II X4 Black Edition processor. If you can point me to a website or give me an answer here that would be great.

Thanks in advance

P.S. I want to be able to run both 64 bit and 32 bit applications.

[oz]

Hello and welcome!

You can check the following threads for info on the different architectures and 64-bit vs 32-bit systems:

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/har...a64-em64t.html

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/lin...bit-linux.html

Note that if you have 4 GB or more of RAM, you will need to run a 64-bit Linux system if you want all your RAM to be detected and used, unless you enable a PAE kernel:

Physical Address Extension - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[fr0k1d]

Thanks for the reply. I still have a question though. On Arch Linux is there a way to run 32bit applications if I use the x86_64 release?

[oz]

Yes, you can if you install the necessary 32-bit libraries:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...side_Arch64.3F

[Rubberman]

Most current 64-bit Linux systems will run 32-bit applications as long as you have installed the required 32-bit libraries. In many cases, if you install the package with the system package manager, it will also install the required libraries for you. If you are building from source, the configuration tool (assuming there is one) will detect which libraries are missing, which you would then have to install, again preferably by using the system package manager, such as aptitude (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, et al), yum (Mandriva, Red Hat and clones, et al), emerge (Gentoo), etc.