Ubuntu

How do I tell if my system is 64bit or 32bit?

Asked by Quaich

I have inherited a Dell inspiron 6400 laptop. I have successfully wiped windows, installed Lucid Ubuntu and got everything working (I hope). I want to use songbird to manage my iPod and they have stopped supporting Linux. I have found a source of a deb file, but I need to choose between 32 and 64 bit versions. How do I find out which one to use?

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ignoble
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Best ignoble (8-launchpad-10-wech-spamgourmet-com) said : 		#1

1. Open a terminal (in the menu: Accessories - Terminal).
2. Type lshw -C cpu
3. There should be an entry named "width" which will answer your question.

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Quaich (quaich) said : 		#2

What a brilliant service. Why do people use windows?

Thank you

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ignoble (8-launchpad-10-wech-spamgourmet-com) said : 		#3

It could only because they're forced to do so...

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#4

We are not always anything like that fast at responding. Ignoble was a total star :) But the question does remain why people stay with Windows. I think it's somewhere between "The Emperor's New Clothes" and staying with what they are most familiar with, even if all they know is fear and frustration.

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Quaich (quaich) said : 		#5

The only reason I use windows is because I can't find an adequate management programme for my iPod and iPhone. I used Songbird until a few weeks ago. I changed PCs, and discovered that Songbird is no longer supported for Linux. What is that all about ....... its open source software for g...s sake! Anyway, I still have to use my wife's PC for managing the Apple stuff - which is even more ironic since the Apple operating system is Linux based....
Is it me?

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#6

Hi :)

Lol, yeah Apple are being particularly annoying around now. Try
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPod/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone

Apple is not based on Linux but both Apple & Linux are developed from Unix. They are both re-writes with slightly different ethos tho. However a lot of the crucial packages seem to have been developed from gnu packages which we also use on top of the linux kernel to produce the operating systems we refer to as "linux".

Really linux is just the kernel and wouldn't get very far without gnu programs and packages. So linux should really be called gnu&linux but that would just be too cumbersome so we generally stick with "linux".

Gnu would also not get very far without the linux kernel because it's own kernel "herd" is far from ready for mainstream usage. You can test drive herd with a certain branch of Debian but mostly Debian and other versions of "linux" stick with the linux kernel.

By sheer coincidence the gnu people were just about ready to test their programs and packages but had no kernel at exactly the same time as Linus Torvalds had a working kernel but needed some programs and packages to see if it worked. I can't remember who advertised on a local bulletin-board but i get the impression that the teams found each other from a post-it note stuck to a notice board amongst other (larger) notices such as "Man with Van available for hire", "House share needs 1 person, contact ...", "Car share going to ... needs 1 or 2 to share driving, contact ... ". Now, of course, it has grown into big companies or organisations with several being floated on the stock exchange!

Songbird is also annoying, possibly not great timing on their part either as linux growth into the desktop market is itself growing exponentially apparently. I found these Community Documentation pages
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPod/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPhone
I think the last one is a bit mis-named now and seems to cover a lot more than just the iphone.

Errr, that 2nd link mentions BSD which is another Unix based operating system. There is a huge amount of similarity between all these Unix based platforms; to the extent that an OpenSource driver produced for linux can usually be easily tweaked to work under any of the others. The difference between Windows Xp and Vista or Windows7 is larger and it takes more work to tweak a driver for one Windows platform to make it work on another Windows platform, apparently.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)