Results of 32->64 bit Ubuntu 12.04->12.10 upgrade

I switched my desktop to 64 bit Ubuntu a couple of years ago after running 32 bit for years. This machine is 7.5 years old. I don't run scientific apps and haven't really noticed much overall improvement. Minecraft on 64 bit runs better I think. In general my system has less free memory than when it was 32 bit. Rather, it freed up some upper memory that isn't addressable on 32 bit but overall apps seem to use more memory. Or maybe it's just the newer Ubuntu versions, particularly Unity.

There are definitely performance advantages for a few specific cases. 64-bit isn't worth it for most Linodes, especially since they're not typically CPU-bound (so the extra overhead in RAM usage doesn't serve any purpose), but for some specific things it can make sense. To be honest, I'm not surprised that you of all people would be the one to fit that specific case, since you're one of the very few Linode customers that are completely CPU-bound :)