Should I use Python 2.7 32 bit or 64 bit with Windows 7

Question

I am setting up Django, and am trying to decide whether to use the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Python 2.7 on my Windows 7 machine.

I've seen the issues with the 64 bit installer, but the real question is whether or not all of the necessary libraries are available for 64 bit, or whether one version has any other issues that I should be aware of.

Answer 1

if you need more than 4gb of RAM to work with:
    return 64
else:
    return 32

Answer 2

I recommend the 32-bit one unless you are going to exhaust the address space. Many third-party modules like OpenCV and Numpy are considerably easier to install with 32-bit Python. (You can build those modules from source to get them to work with 64-bit Python but that's probably more time and effort than necessary in most cases. Sometimes there are unofficial 64-bit builds but they aren't supported by the module authors.)

While you probably don't need those modules for Django, if this is your personal computer and you might install them for a different project and don't want to deal with two Python installations on the same machine, I would choose 32-bit.