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How to know that your machine hardware supports 64 bit OS

Once I was trying to install Docker for my project. I was looking at the documentation of docker and get to know that Docker is only works on 64 bit machine. I was running with Ubuntu 14.04 32 bit  on my machine. And I was not sure that my hardwares will support 64 bit OS because my machine is quite old.

So I started searching on web with question “How I can know my hardware supports 64 bit OS ?” . After juggling in google I find that it depends on which processor model you are using.

Following are steps to know your processor supports 64 bit OS or not.

Note : All commands are tested on Ubuntu

Step 1 : Get processor information by command

less /proc/cpuinfo

This will give you information of processor.

Grab the Model name. In my case it is : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T5670  @ 1.80GHz

Step 2 : Open Company website

For Intel : http://ark.intel.com/ or For AMD : http://products.amd.com/en-us > view details

Step 3 : Search of model number in website

In my case T5670

Step 4 : Search for field Intel 64 in website

If value is yes then it supported and if value is no then it is not supported.

After installing 64 bit OS into your machine, Verify OS by Following command :

uname -a

In my case result is like this :

Linux 3.13.0-24-generic #46-Ubuntu SMP Thu Apr 10 19:11:08 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Hope that helps!!!