After finding this article, I learned that some commands revealed “armhf” or “32” which was what I was expecting.

So, you might be running 32-bit OS on 64-bit architecture and get confusing results without a deep dive.

Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

You can also check using a environment variable:

echo $HOSTTYPE

Result:

i386 -> 32 bits
x86_64 -> 64 bits

Thanks mate. I don’t know this command before. Much appreciated.

@Xinchuangfu,

Thanks for the tip, yes that command worked on my Ubuntu, here is the output.

tecmint@tecmint ~ $ echo $HOSTTYPE
x86_64