Minor headaches with 64 bit Ubuntu

I've migrated away from using windows since last year as a result of the poor reviews of Vista and it's high associated cost. Considering that you need a rather beefy system and the OS is quite a hog, I decided to jump boat and go with Linux as my main OS.

The translation has been largely painless and I am, for the most part happy with the OS. There are, however some draw backs for the specific version I am using. The 64 bit version of Ubuntu still has some significant bugs compared to the 32 bit version.

Though word on the net is that the 64 bit version is as stable as the 32 bit version there are some kinks with the system that does annoy me. One of them is the slow file transfers. I am currently relocating many of my media files to a dedicated media HD. For large file transfers (42 GB) I have found that transfer rates are quite slow, running at 5.6 MB/sec. The system I use has 2x SATA 500 GB hard drives, each should be able to sustain about 60 MB/sec of read and write operations. Getting only 1/12 of the transfer performance is quite painful, especially when it comes to having to wait 2 hours for the transfer to complete.

The other problem with the 64 bit version is that Java support isn't as solid compared to the 32 bit OS. The problem often leads me to restart my browser from time to time when the web applications I use stop working.

The advantage of having a 64 bit operating system is being able to address significantly more memory than a 32 bit operating system, which is limited to only 4 GB of ram. I am currently running at 4 GB of ram and have no plans in the near future to increase my memory pool. I don't even break 2 GB of used memory quite often.

Though I have to say that Ubuntu is quite solid when it comes to performance and user experience, I would go contrarty to what people are saying on the net that the 64 bit version is OK and stick with the 32 bit version. For the most part, you won't run into problems, but there will be times when you will want to back up your data and some of these bugs will irritate you.

With the prices of 1 TB hard drives dropping incredibly fast in Japan, I am seriously looking to pick up another drive and have the computer automatically back up important files on a regular basis.

Should the price of hard drives drop further, I would consider setting up a dedicated raid array for the OS (Raid 0) to improve OS performance and setup a secondary raid array for data redundancy.