On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 11:27:34AM -0800, Richard Vickery wrote:
Having run i386 since I began using Linux in 1998 and recently
switched
over to x86_64 at the end of 2012 / the middle of 2013, I used to say that
Linux was a tank, that "you can do back-flips in Linux; you could drop a
bomb on it and it would keep running". i386 will not crash - it is
extremely unlikely event. The likelihood of an i386 machine crashing is
maybe 0.25 percent, in my unscientific opinion.
I think any stability/instability difference is mostly attributable to
something other than 32 vs. 64-bit. There may be some of it, but I don't
think it's the major factor. In fact, as 64-bit has rapidly become more
dominant, it's likely that it recieves more testing.
Since my switch-over I can't really say that I've gained
anything. I don't
think that I can put the demands on the machine as I used to. The reason I
switched is to contribute more to this group. This I would lose if I went
back to i386. Other than that, I can't say that there is anything to lose.
Some amout of greater performance, since the x86_64 architecture has
improvements beyond just more bits.
--
Matthew Miller -- Fedora Project -- <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>