Hi.
Observations on 32-bit and 64-bit:
I have run native 32-bit OSs on a (Dell) IBM Xeon server ("EM64T"), and on a (custom) AMD Athlon-64 workstation. However, both boxes are now running 64-bit Debian.
The Xeon box is also a server for virtual machines, running VMWare Server 2. If you have the appropriate hardware-assisted features for virtual, you can use 32-bit
and 64-bit OSs as virtual machines.
However, the Xeon that I use is old, so I can run only 32-bit virtual machines. I did try installing BeOS, but I didn't get very far. I seem to recall that I needed to have a real or virtual floppy to start the process. I see I have "haiku-r1alpha2.iso" in my inventory, but apparently I have not yet done anything with it.
Additionally, I have compiled c++ and Fortran in 32-bit mode on the AMD, and, with the appropriate libraries, these codes run correctly as well.
The article at
x86-64 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia might be worth reading ... cheers, drl