Ubuntu Server on 5 year old PC

I was recently downloading Ubuntu server to put on an old machine to serve media around my house.

I was wondering why they recommend the 64-bit version of there server? Does this affect anything if I am putting it on a 5 year old computer? What about 32 bit?

Also if you could recommend some best practices for a home server. I would like to share files stream. Also host some webpages as well as use it as my git repository.

A tutorial links would be appreciated or very explicit advice :)

Please and thank you.

From ubuntu garbagecollector

• 64bit is recommended because most (probably all) systems sold today as servers are 64bit and have much more than 4GB of RAM, making 64bit necessary. If you're talking about normal 5 year old PC hardware though, I really doubt it's 64bit with 8GB of RAM, so go for 32bit.

  I would just install openssh-server and use that to handle both SSH and SFTP (and by extension SSHFS, which lets you have a networked filesystem).

  SSHFS howto here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SSHFS

  Apache2 or lighttpd for web hosting, depending what you want. Apache2 is pretty easy to get going. Just install it, and put your index.html or index.php (or whatever) in /var/www/ If you SFTP things to /var/www/stuff/ then others can download them from their web browser instead of needing to know how to use SFTP too.

  garbagecollector : @maco thanks for the concise and quick answer.
  From maco