[01:05] <kaushal>  have Dell Laptop A860 Core2 Duo wishing to install Ubuntu 10.10 with 4 Gigs RAM
[01:05] <kaushal> is it better to go for 32 Bit or 64 Bit
[01:07] <head_victim> In my experience if you have a computer that is 64bit capable there is not reason not to go with 64bit but there will be others who disagree.
[01:07] <kaushal> ok
[01:08] <kaushal> So video card Memory is shared in RAM
[01:09] <head_victim> That has nothing to do with 32/64 bit it's got to do with what specific hardware you have
[01:10] <kaushal> ok
[01:12] <kaushal> so is there a way to know how much RAM a Video Card uses ?
[01:12] <kaushal> is it cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep RAM
[01:12] <head_victim> Not sure, I've only ever had video cards with their own ram, not system shared
[01:13] <kaushal> so i did ran that command
[01:13] <kaushal> is it cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i RAM
[01:14] <kaushal> is it returned 256MB
[01:14] <head_victim> Sorry mate, I wouldn't know where to start. It's possible though as that sounds about normal. The laptop specifications should list how much it uses though
[01:15] <kaushal> head_victim: sure
[01:15] <kaushal> head_victim: Thanks
[01:15] <kaushal> so ideally I should go for 64 Bit
[01:16] <head_victim> I would use it but for some reason http://www.ubuntu.com/desktop/get-ubuntu/download always suggests the 32bit as recommended. I personally haven't had an issue with 64bit in a couple of years.
[01:17] <head_victim> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/32bit_and_64bit
[01:17] <head_victim> I guess the decision is split depending on what website you're looking at.
[01:22] <kaushal> head_victim: At the moment I am running 32 Bit 10.10
[01:23] <kaushal> is it better to use pae kernel or better to use 64 Bit OS ?
[01:24] <dns53> what are you running? do you have more than 4gb of ram and do you have a program that will need more than 4gb of memory?
[01:24] <kaushal> nope
[01:25] <kaushal> I have just 4 GB RAM
[01:25] <dns53> personally i'd run a 64 bit os, but flash is not quite as stable
[01:25] <kaushal> but the 32 Bit OS reports 3.4 GB and out of 3.4 GB 256mb is shared by Video Card
[01:26] <kaushal> flash ?
[01:27] <dns53> yes, that is why you need a pae kernel (this is a hack to allow a 32 bit os to address more than 3 gb of memory) or a native 64 bit kernel
[01:27] <kaushal> ok
[01:27] <kaushal> dns53: i didnot understand about flash ?
[01:27] <dns53> adobe flash has a 64 bit port, it works but it is not the best port
[01:27] <kaushal> oh ok
[01:28] <dns53> it's fine for me, but results may vary
[01:29] <kaushal> dns53: so i would reinstall 10.10 with 64 Bit OS
[01:29] <kaushal> head_victim: Thanks
[01:29] <kaushal> dns53: Thanks
[01:29] <kaushal> apologies for bugging
[01:30] <dns53> nothing wrong with asking
[01:33] <head_victim> No worries at all
[01:44] <kaushal> Also I have found something interesting also
[01:45] <kaushal> so HT means Hyperthreading
[01:45] <kaushal> http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Understanding_proc_cpuinfo.html
[01:45] <kaushal> so HT is enabled in the BIOS ?
[01:46] <kaushal> and I have HT as flag in cpuinfo
[01:46] <kaushal> so to use HT i need to use SMP kernel ?
[01:46] <kaushal> please help me understand
[01:48] <dns53> so hyperthreading can be disabled in the bios as it could potentially cause problems
[01:49] <kaushal> ok
[01:50] <dns53> there is no smtp kernel any more, you do not need a different kernel to use smtp anymore, you did need one 1998-2002 ish
[01:50] <kaushal> oh ok
[01:50] <head_victim> dns53: ever seen an issue with HT though?
[01:51] <kaushal> dns53: you said potential problems 
[01:51] <dns53> head_victim never, but bios manufacturers put flags like that in case there are problems
[01:51] <kaushal> not sure i understand that
[01:51] <head_victim> dns53: ah ok, just curious because again I'd heard it was possible but another of those things I'd never seen in real life.
[01:51] <dns53> so it is not a problem but it was new so they have the option to dissable things incase
[01:52] <head_victim> Yep, sounds fair.
[01:52] <dns53> head_victim i've had occasional problems with the virtualisation extensions so it can be useful to have
[01:53] <head_victim> dns53: ah ok, I guess it would make sense to be able to switch "features" on and off, especially from a "stable" point of view.
[01:54] <dns53> kaushal back to your question, hyper threading is more like 1 1/2 cpu's, so you can do a little more than you would if you just had the single core
[01:55] <kaushal> dns53: sorry i got disconnected
[01:56] <kaushal> ok
[01:56] <dns53> a computer does processing a small chunk at a time, so you would read a file for a fraction of a second, draw something on screen for a fraction, read something off a network etc 
[01:56] <dns53> so hyper threading allows the cpu to do one thing and part of another thing in the time slice
[01:57] <kaushal> ok
[01:58] <kaushal> so if i enable HT in my BIOS
[01:58] <kaushal> if I am having Core 2 Duo 
[01:58] <kaushal> so it would lead to issues ?
[01:58] <kaushal> as far as yes
[01:58] <dns53> i have not heard of any problems, you get more performance
[01:59] <kaushal> dns53: but you said potential problems 
[02:00] <dns53> there are none but hardware manufacturers put things in because it is almost impossible to fix later
[02:01] <kaushal> ok
[02:01] <kaushal> Also as per http://www.brandonhutchinson.com/Understanding_proc_cpuinfo.html
[02:01] <kaushal> it specifies about Intel
[02:01] <kaushal> How do i understand if its AMD 
[02:03] <dns53> it will have it will say: vendor_id	: AuthenticAMD
[02:03] <dns53> my server's cpu info:   http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/542134/
[02:04] <kaushal> yes
[02:05] <kaushal> but how to make out ifs single core or dual core 
[02:06] <dns53> you look and see how many cores it describes, amd does not have hyper threading
[02:07] <kaushal> it says 2 cores
[02:07] <kaushal> so its a single physical processor ?
[02:07] <dns53> it probably has 1 
[02:08] <dns53> 1 chip itself, 2 cores
[02:08] <kaushal> ok
[05:31] <head_victim> Is it just me or has FF been a bit crashy of late?
[05:50] <head_victim> My bad, it's flash that's buggy, not FF.
[08:22] <kaushal> hi
[08:22] <kaushal> can someone please guide me to install Flash on firefox 64 Bit 
[08:22] <kaushal> I am on 10.10 64 Bit OS