
Originally Posted by
chrestomanci
Personally, I would not recommend 64bit Linux to a beginner. Most of the Linux world still assumes that most users are running 32bit x86 Linux, and when you move to another platform there are various incompatibilities to contend with. Some applications, especially multimedia ones are not available for 64bit.
It is possible to work around these issues using things like chroot environments, and virtualisation, (I have done so) but it is a pain, and an added complexity that a beginner can do without, so unless you have a good reason for installing more than 4Gb of RAM in your box, and running applications that will use it, I would avoid 64 bit linux for now.