Only 1 GB of RAM. Should I go for 32-bit Lubuntu, or 64-bit?

Solution 1:

Go for the version it is suppose to be able to hold.

Intel Atom N450 is 64-bit so I would stick to a 64-bit and match the minimum specs for any of the Ubuntu flavours. lUbuntu and xUbuntu are options. Beyond that: do consider alternatives that are around but not Ubuntu; like Puppy Linux or Damn Small Linux.

Regarding:

What will perform better, 64-bit or 32-bit?

That depends on usage. 64-bit should perform better on heavy usage.

Is Lubuntu indeed the best flavor?

Probably. Or xUbuntu (that is more a preference of desktop: lxde or xfce and not about processor).

Solution 2:

According to your computer specification, you should use 32bit system. 64bit system can use more than 4GBs of RAM, but it's useless when you have only one. What is more, 32bit would be safer for this processor. Lubuntu is the most lightweight distribution (AFAIK), so this is also good for this computer.

Solution 3:

According to intel atom N450 supports 64bit but for performance reasons you should choose lubuntu 32 bit.

Just keep in mind that some applications support only 64bit nowadays.

• One example is Google Chrome which has no 32 bit installer for linux anymore

  • but if you use Chromium you can still install the Adobe Flash Player for 32-bit Chromium directly from Adobe here (downloading the PPAPI .tar.gz and copying libpepflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/adobe-flashplugin/libpepflashplayer.so or similar should work)

• Another example is viber which also has only 64bit installer for linux.

Solution 4:

This question was long ago, but my 2c.

i386 or 32-bit is more efficient with smaller memory addresses (excluding local addressing) so i386 makes better use of your limited RAM and is generally what I'd pick on releases up to 18.04; however you can't upgrade i386 so that's a plus for amd64.

i386 however can be slower to run on some amd64 cpus, so the benefit of more efficient use of memory (smaller word sizes) can be lost due to slower execution in some cases (CPU specific).

If you're going to upgrade past 18.04; I'd now use amd64; though given Lubuntu didn't support upgrading 18.04 (last LXDE release); that advantage maybe moot (but is worth something if you're using Xubuntu/Xfce).

I'd decide by what applications you'll run, will they benefit by having slightly more ram? plus your CPU; does it run amd64 faster than i386 as more modern cpus usually do. In QA-testing I find various boxes perform differently so my answer can vary on a box (ie. cpu).

The wordsize hit 32bit/4byte vs 64bits/8bytes isn't that great, is generally about equal to the performance loss of running the older i386 code vs. more native amd64 on modern cpus. On older/earlier CPUs though; the i386 generally didn't have the performance hit when compared with amd64 execution unlike more modern cpus.

This opinion is based on QA-testing Lubuntu 18.04 -> 19.04 (using i386 or 32-bit) versus the same amd64 I tended to prefer the i386 on low ram boxes, but the difference was minimal/subjectively equal and I found the difference was greatly influenced by the apps you used (some apps performed better in amd64!)

Subjectively I'd like 2GB for amd64 as a minimum; and it was all I used in QA-testing 19.10 and later (though I did keep a pentium 4 i386 box upgrading until the building of packages for i386 stopped late in the beta cycle of eoan)