Ok, I've always, for some reason, thought that my cpu had 32 bit registers... so I always installed the 32bit version of all OSs that I've used. Now though I ran a lscpu, and I get:
fer@fer-lap:~$ lscpu
Arquitectura: i686
CPU op-mode(s): 32-bit, 64-bit
Does this mean I can use 64 bit OSs?
Running these I get:
fer@fer-lap:~$ grep flags /proc/cpuinfo
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx lm constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm lahf_lm dtherm
And I have read that the lm flag means long mode, which stands for 64 bit cpus. Also, as a last test, running lshw gives, for the cpu section:
*-cpu:0
descripción: CPU
producto: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T5800 @ 2.00GHz
fabricante: Intel Corp.
id físico: 4
información del bus: cpu@0
versión: 6.15.13
serie: 0000-06FD-0000-0000-0000-0000
ranura: U2E1
tamaño: 2GHz
capacidad: 4096MHz
anchura: 64 bits
It's in spanish and the last line stands for width (I guess register width). So... can I install the 64 bit of the OS? Will it be a big diference in performance? Because that's what I'm looking for (doesn't need to be a BIG difference)
Thanks in advance.