18 Nov
2015
18 Nov
'15
11:40 a.m.
Chris Dennis asked:
I'm about to install Debian on my shiny new
SSD-based BitFolk VPS, in
the standard configuration with 1GB of RAM and 10GB of disk space.
And the first question is: Should I, in 2015, go for 64 bits or 32 bits?
* The BitFolk rescue environment supports 64 bits now.
* Addressing 1GB of RAM is not an issue.
* Will a 64-bit system run faster? Or slower?
* Will 64-bit executables waste precious disk space?
From my experience, a 64-bit system will be a bit faster at CPU-limited
things, but you're unlikely to notice. A server spends a huge percentage
of its time in the idle loop and most of the rest dealing with the disc
system.
But it will take up noticeably more RAM - not so much the larger
addresses everywhere in the code, but the way the page size for the
virtual memory is much larger - so that can mean things swapping more
and slowing the whole very noticeably down.
When you have a server with much more RAM, 64-bits makes sense. But not,
I think, with 1GiB.
Other people will doubtless disagree :)
Ian