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I've got an old pc with windows XP 32 bit, and I wanted to turn it into a home based server. I am thinking of installing ubuntu as an OS. I'm a networking novice so I'm not quite sure if it will work good. My other computers are all running windows 7 64 bit. So, will it be sufficient to turn this 32 bit box into a server to hold all my files and backups, while the 64 bit pc's just exchange the data? Please let me know, or educate me on the subject. Thanks in advance.

joeb
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3 Answers3

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You have a processor that is capable of 64-bit, so go ahead and use a 64-bit version of Ubuntu.

You stated elsewhere that your PC has a "Pentium Duo Core" chip. Intel has never released a dual core chip called "Pentium" that doesn't support 64-bit apart from the "Yonah", a re-branded version of the Pentium M that is for laptops.

thomasrutter
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It depends on the hardware how much ram/cpu and disk space you have, for example if you have 512mb of ram and Pantium 4 cpu with sufficient disk space let's say 80gb an Ethernet card, that should enable you to have a decent server, with BackupPC that will make it easy to make backups

younes
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As to whether it will serve your novice-networking needs, I'll go out on a limb and say "probably".

update/correction: I previously said that your processor is only capable of 32bit processing. I wish to rescind that claim. In fact I believe it is probably only capable of 32 bit processing given some of your previous comments regarding it's brand, model, and previous operating system, yet to be perfectly fair, it might be 64 bit capable. It is impossible to tell without more information. Please see this informative Wikipedia link regarding the processor you previously mentioned.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_Dual-Core

The easiest way to find out if your CPU is 64bit is to try to install Ubuntu64, and if it fails to install, then your processor is not 64bit. Yet your decision doesn't stop there.

I work with all generations of PCs, some predating the year 2000, and due to the complications I was encountering with Ubuntu64, I all but entirely stopped using it. Among the more common annoyances, it simply wastes RAM, so if your old PC has 2gb or less RAM, and if you don't intend to purchase more for it, I would strongly urge you to stick with 32bit, but that's just a personal opinion.

gyropyge
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