Hello
1) How can I find what bit of OS I am running on? 16 bit, 64 bit?
2) What is the difference in having different bits?
3) Below is the output of /etc/release/ what are all these components meaning?
$ more /etc/release
Solaris 10 11/06 s10x_u3wos_10 X86
$

Thank you!

Run "isalist" and post the output.

Unless it says something like "sparcv9" or "amd64" you are on 32 bit.

If you are running a UNIX like system, unless you are on an ancient PDP/11 then you are likely to be 32 bit at the very least.

$ isalist
amd64 pentium_pro+mmx pentium_pro pentium+mmx pentium i486 i386 i86
$

So what bit am I running on ? and How does it matter?

Solaris 10 Means the OS is Solaris 10 (aka SunOS 5.10)
11/06 Means that this is the specific release of Solaris 10 made in November 2006 (different releases have different bug fixes and features - it's sort of like Windows Service packs... sort of)
s10x_u3wos_10 - Sorry, no idea
X86 This version is compiled for X86 processors (ie the same sort of hardware you can run windows on, as opposed to something like a Sparc architecture).

On Solaris you can find out the supported programming model(s) using isainfo.

There are a number of other options including the -b option prints the number of bits in the address space of the native applications environment.

On current UNIX systems the programing model is typically either IPL32 or LP64. In the mid-1990s, the Aspen WG agreed on the LP64 programming model and produced a paper which will help you understand the various programming models.

64-BIT PROGRAMMING MODELS

For further information on UNIX programming models Google is your friend!

will show you the actual kernel modules loaded. Just -v is a bit vague.

oh, and to answer your number 2), get more details here:

Bit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Integer (computer science) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

basically, the bit size determines how long a "word" is to the CPU. 16bit word is 2 bytes, 32bit word is 4 bytes, 64bit word is 8 bytes, and so on.

from the point of view of a 32bit processor, a doubleword is 64 bits.

the bigger a native word, the more complex a CPUs calculations can be because it can address bigger numbers with fewer operations.