I am running Ubuntu 16.04 32-bit on my PC which has 4GB of RAM, the system recognizes 3.9GB out of 4GB with PAE enabled, but when I boot into a live session of Ubuntu 16.04 64-bit, it recognizes 3.8 GB, why is that? I understand that a portion may be reserved for the video card, but this still makes no sense to me. I have Windows 10 64-bit on the same PC which recognizes all 4GB. Is there any advantage to switching to 64-bit Ubuntu in this case?
1 Answer
Both 32 and 64bit Ubuntu recognize all the RAM. Some of it may be reserved, and more RAM may be reserved in a 64bit OS, also, the way "available" RAM is reported may be different form Windows. It's not exactly a problem, unless you want to be really picky about how 3.9 vs 3.8 looks.
Generally, it is recommended to use a 64bit *buntu if the PC has more then 2GB of RAM.
