Advice on changing to 64 bits

[Tom Horsley]

On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 13:32:11 +0100
Klaus-Peter Schrage wrote:

> I should mention that I want to use virtualization (KVM, VMware Server), 
> and that the processor has Intel's hardware vitualization capabilities.

The last I heard, most virtualization systems need you to be running
a 64 bit virtual host if you want to support 64 bit virtual machines
(though that may have changed since the last I read), so that might be
one pro for 64 bits.

I know I run 64bit all the time, about the only thing I need 32 bit for
is weird old videos with strange and wondrous codecs - the 32 bit mplayer
can often play them with a directory full of windows codecs installed in
/usr/lib/codecs even when nothing else can play them, but those are
actually pretty rare, mostly everything just works in 64 bit versions
(and for things like mplayer, you can run the 32 bit version under
a 64 bit kernel).