OK, this may actually be an argument strong enough to convince all the users of this computer to format the machine and reinstall a 64 version ("because I wanna play XCOM" was just not enough).

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Quoting: DrMcCoyOf course it's using PAE.

And with PAE, the operating system can access more than 4GB of RAM. A single process is still limited to 4GB, though.

Thanks for the explanation, I'm just realizing Ubuntu installed PAE by itself, upon detecting all that RAM. Is this 4-gig-per-process limit the main reason people say PAE sucks?

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Quoting: toor

Quoting: wleoncio

Quoting: drmothReally, one of the major reasons for not running 32-bit is RAM. Even if you have 4GB, your 32-bit system can only read about 3GB of it! Please upgrade people!

My system properties state "Memory: 5,8 GiB" as well as "OS type: 32-bit". My system is using all the 6 GB I'm providing it, isn't it?

It's just not possible. If you are in 32 bits you only have 2^32 possible memory adresses.

What's happening on my system, then? AFAIK, it's not using PAE or anything (I just learned of its existence last week).

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Quoting: drmothReally, one of the major reasons for not running 32-bit is RAM. Even if you have 4GB, your 32-bit system can only read about 3GB of it! Please upgrade people!

My system properties state "Memory: 5,8 GiB" as well as "OS type: 32-bit". My system is using all the 6 GB I'm providing it, isn't it?

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Quoting: Astrothere wasn't any words that says XCOM dosn't run on 32bit OS

To be fair, the game's Steam store page does state Linux 64 bits as minimum requirements, but I agree that was easy to miss out on.

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Quoting: DrMcCoyAlso: I'm actually shocked that there's still so many people running full 32-bit installs. I had thought that pretty much died out around the time I got a 64-bit system...

Think about people like me, who back in 2010 wanted a stable Linux system, went to www.ubuntu.com, read "we recommend the 32-bit version", installed it and had just been updating that same machine since then.

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Quoting: WorMzyif this survey is to be believed, over 61% of Steam on Linux users are on 64-bit versions of their distribution.

Steam survey sample selection is very misterious, but it's a start. Thanks!

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Quoting: RutineThere was a thread in Steam, some guy asked for a 32-bit version of X-Com, and many people told him he was obsolete, and started patronizing him, and making jokes about 16-bit support, etc.
I wonder if there are statistics concerning 32-bit and 64-bit use by Linux users

I saw that, and I honestly had never seen Linux users be so condescending with each other. I've asked about those statistics myself in that thread, but all I got was some unquoted figures of "98% 64-bit" which I found hard to believe.

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Quoting: nllaUbuntu was cautious for a long time about recommending 64-bit as default because of some issues with java, flash, and wine, but these issues are now past. But 64-bit is specially relevant for gamers, as overall it has some performance improvements: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=ubuntu_1404_x64 [External Link]

Thanks for the explanations, but hasn't this switch happened more or less simultaneously throughout the Linux community or was is just Ubuntu who held back on 64 bits for all those years?

I'm wondering, has the majority of people really been running 64-bit Linux OSs for years, even though only a few years ago those had many compatibility issues, or has everyone but me just reinstalled their whole OS when multilib went stable?

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Honestly, I'm still trying to understand how come I'm feeling like I'm among a very tiny minority that uses a 32-bit OS. My gaming computer is a living room PC which has been running Ubuntu LTS releases for over 6 years. Up until April 2014, I was running 12.04, which was released on a time where 32 bits were still the recommended version.

So for someone running Ubuntu LTS releases, this whole thing about 64-bit being the norm and 32-bit being something that should have been abandoned long ago feels quite strange.

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