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I am setting up a LAMP server, and am looking at using a spare 32bit box I have.

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This is subjective, but no. I run all my Ubuntu servers as 32, since I don't have a 64 machine I can use as a server. – jrg♦ Feb 27 '12 at 22:57

closed as not constructive by enzotib, jrg♦ Feb 27 '12 at 22:58

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote

from my experience since I did the same question you are doing I have the following:

  1. Both will be the same if what you want is stability. I mean like really REALLY the same. 4 Months of using Ubuntu 11.04 in both 32 and 64 as a server and 8 more using 10.10 as 32 and 64 as server can prove it.

  2. Both will get updates for more security and stability.

  3. Lamp works excellent in both. Easy to install in both (same way actually) and no problems whatsoever with 0% reboots.

  4. Remember that 32 has the 4GB limit which can be jumped by using PAE but come one, if you can use 64bit, you can use more than 4GB easily.

  5. If you have 32bit hardware with no 64bit compatibility then I recommend 32bit since you will loose a lot of the benefits of using 64bit software on 64bit hardware.

  6. Both will offer the SAME SPEED. But here is the catch. On 64bit, there are several cases where USING the 64 capabilities will come in handy. For example compiling something will be done faster (Of course using multiple CPUs will also accomplish this). For my experience, for the normal LAMP usage, I have not seen a speed difference. not in MySQL, not in apache, cpu usage, memory usage. The difference is there but is so small is not worth mentioning.

Basically, in your case, use the 32Bit Server and enjoy a very good server indeed.

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up vote 1 down vote

no difference in stability. it theoretically won't have access to as much memory (but running it on 32 bit hardware means you don't have that much anyway) and slightly slower for programs optimised for 64 bit architectures, but a lamp stack will run fine.

i only just changed over to a 64 bit server for my lamp machine a couple of months ago. no real difference other than future expansion

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