Installing a Linux Distro: choosing between 32-bit and 64-bit

A slow week, learning wise.

Setting up my learning to code environment for The Odin Project required some hard drive file maintenance.

And, of course, all my backup medium were full.

With clean up accomplished, this past weekend I geared up for TOP on my Windows 7 machine. Memo to the file: it helps to read the instructions, no matter the excitement level.

The install of Oracle VirtualBox went as advertised. No problems there.

Xubuntu 18.04, not so much, as I fixated on my CPU brand (Intel) instead of its data width (64-bits) which resulted in a VM snit.

Off to the TOP Discord and a suggestion from @bycdiaz#1505 (thanks!) to try the 64-bit version got me back on track.

If I had done a bit of Googling first, I would have found the explanation. Apparently, while 32-bit will run for many folks on 64-bit machines, the AMD distro is preferable regardless of who makes the 64-bit CPU.

My laptop was very fussy and wanted xubuntu-18.04.1-desktop-amd64.iso and absolutely refused to play with 32-bit.

Curiosity has me researching why the 32-bit version would not run. From what I’ve read, it should have, at least, limped along.

If you can offer any guidance in this realm, please share in the comments.