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I got a new hard drive, downloaded ubuntu using unetbootin on a different system. Default to 32 bit, installed it and everything okay. But my laptop (old Acer aspire one 722) is 64 bit. When i realized this, wanted to see if i can get t64 ubuntu (same LTS 14.4). Made a bootable USB using unetbootin. But on shutdown and start, it says missing or bad OS (USB is default), then goes to hard drive and the 32 bit boots up.

Main point where my question is different than others is that I ask about my specific hardware. After talking to a linux admin, he said even if make my laptop 8GB the CPU is quite out dated, so now I plan to buy a new laptop in 5-6 months before I change OS to 64. It is a 3 year old laptop. And has only 1 working slot, the other one is a blank.

Output of lscpu

Architecture:          i686
CPU op-mode(s):        32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:            Little Endian
CPU(s):                2
On-line CPU(s) list:   0,1
Thread(s) per core:    1
Core(s) per socket:    2
Socket(s):             1
Vendor ID:             AuthenticAMD
CPU family:            20
Model:                 2
Stepping:              0
CPU MHz:               800.000
BogoMIPS:              1995.07
Virtualization:        AMD-V
L1d cache:             32K
L1i cache:             32K
L2 cache:              512K

One of the reasons I want to try the 64 is that this laptop used to be windows XP and now on ubuntu it seems slower, probably cause the CPU is old and only 4GB ram. But wondering if 64 arch will make things better?

If I use ubuntu 12 will laptop performance be better?

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  • 64bit will not make it better if you have not so good performance with 32bit as 64bit uses more system resources. 14.04.2 LTS 32bit should work fine on older computers, with HWE kernels even so.
    – JoKeR
    May 20, 2015 at 19:41
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    Use the USB startup disk creator in ubuntu to create the usb.
    – psusi
    May 20, 2015 at 22:57
  • possible duplicate of How do I make an Bootable Ubuntu USB?. Use Startup Disk Creator, which is built-in in Ubuntu, to create the Ubuntu live USB.
    – karel
    May 21, 2015 at 2:22

2 Answers 2

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If you only have 4GB of ram, then 64 bit won't do any good for performance. If you plan on upgrading the ram, you might want 64 bit, but if you're not going to upgrade in the nearish future, I wouldn't bother with it. Also, for an install, I prefer an actual DVD install disk. I find them more reliable than USB drives, since more machines can boot off a DVD but not USB.

Ubuntu 14, in my experience, seems to run just as fast as Ubuntu 12. You might want to try Ubuntu 15, the latest version.

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  • I'm running of the hard disk now. USB only used to install . i dont have a DVD reader on this laptop
    – tgkprog
    May 20, 2015 at 20:02
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    I see. There should be an option in the 64 bit installer to upgrade to 64 bit from 32 but. I know you can do that with version upgrades, so maybe also going to 64 bit.
    – Daniel
    May 20, 2015 at 20:25
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    @Daniel no, upgrading from 32 bit to 64 bit is not possible.
    – Smile4ever
    May 21, 2015 at 6:36
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UNetBootin has become less and less reliable. Use dd from the command line to create an USB bootable drive. (warning: follow the instructions correctly, not doing so may result in a loss of data)

Plug in your USB stick. It will get erased, so make sure there are no important files on it.

Display all drives:

df -h

Look for /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc. The size of the drive can be seen in the second column. Make sure the size matches your USB stick.

Do not use /dev/sdc1 or /dev/sdb1, but instead omit the 1 so you use /dev/sdb or /dev/sdc.

Now open the terminal in the folder where you downloaded your ISO, for example

cd ~/Downloads

Then flash the ISO onto the USB drive (replace the X with an b/c depending on the output of df -h). Make sure the ISO file name is correct (here ubuntu*.iso).

sudo dd if=ubuntu*.iso of=/dev/sdX

Now wait a few minutes until the command completes. Make sure to properly unmount the disk:

sudo umount /dev/sdX

Now try out your USB drive with Ubuntu on it. :)

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