On 2021-01-16, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
On 16/01/2021 15:36, Jim Jackson wrote:
Putting more than 4GB in a 32 bit Win 7 machine was pointless.

Not sure if the same applies to Win 10/32 bit.

Of course it does, any 32bit system can only use about 3.2GB of RAM.

With Linux that is per process. So multi-processing can use all the memory.
Don't know about windows.

I don't think there are any 32 bit linices left in the main distros

Depends what you call main :-)

Given the number of Raspberry Pi's sold, I'm sure one of the main
distros is Raspberry Pi OS (previously known as Raspbian), even accounting
for not all pis running it. And Raspberry Pi OS is 32 bit (yeah I know
there's a 64 bit not quite alpha version out there).

But in the Intel/AMD world you are probably right. However 64bit is not
always better, as I know to my cost after I upgraded to 64 bit on my
modest Intel based desktop. It had worked pretty well, if modestly, with
32 bit linux for quite a time, but the memory use of 64 bit really hits
performance - it swaps a lot. Can't be bothered with a memory upgrade,
so am testing whether I can do most things on an 8Gb RPI4.

I remember the arguments about 'which was best' the
mid noughties

I went 64 bit sometime around 2008 IIRC