Often I find that I am needing to determine a) if an O/S install is 32bit or 64bit and b) if the CPU will support 64bit. I run into a lot of Linux boxes that have 64bit CPUs but the 32bit version of the distribution was installed. Here are a few quick ways to tell. For the O/S: The architecture should be listed as x86_64 for 64bit or i686 for 32bit. Using uname (-m or -p): 64bit $ uname -m x86_64 $ uname -p x86_64 32bit $ uname -m i686 $ uname -p i686 or using lscpu: 64bit $ lscpu | grep -i arch Architecture: x86_64 32bit $ lscpu | grep -i arch Architecture: i686 or using getconf: 64bit $ getconf...

Just recently I finally tired of putting up with my old Thinkpad. It was just too slow. Well, technically I have three of them. One runs Windows 7, one runs Ubunutu and one is dual boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu. The problem is that on the Windows side they just haven’t been reliable for running Word, Excel, and Project. I’d be fine at home. I’d fire up Windows, make sure there were no pending updates to drag me down and make sure that SugarSync and Dropbox were synced in advance. But it never failed I’d get into a meeting and it would often take 15-20 minutes to get booted, loaded,...