64 bit vs 32 bit Linux

on an AMD Athlon 64

[zCat]

I'm looking at replacing one of my dedicated servers, which is getting a little old in the tooth, and it seems 64 bits are all the rage. What has me slightly confused is that they offer a choice of both 32 bit and 64 bit Linux. Is there any reason I should choose one over the other?

The server will be running Apache and Java (not Tomcat), and a few other minor but non-exotic open-source programs. Are there any pitfalls I should watch out for?

[jtara]

I'd install the 64-bit. That's what I've done.

You can still run 32-bit programs, so this is generally a no-lose situation. If something you want to install is not available in 64-bit, you can still just install the 32-bit version.

The one gotcha is with Firefox, if you are going to be using it as a workstation. You should install the 32-bit version of Firefox. You should be able to do a search to get the details of how to do this for your particular Linux distribution.

The reason for this is that some of the plugins (particularly, Adobe Acrobat and Macromedia Flash) are not available in a 64-bit version, and the 64-bit version of Firefox will not run 32-bit plugins.

[zCat]

Thanks for the info. This is a dedicated server at a remote location, so I won't be using it as a workstation ;).

It's now been set up for me; as I don't need to put it into production straight away I'll play around with it to see if there are any surprises; if the worst comes to the worst I can always install a different OS image.