Thierry de Coulon wrote:
Hello all,
I have been a Linux user for over five years - mostly using SuSE first, then
Debian based distributions, but from time to time "toying" with Gentoo.
Now I'm in the process of building an Opteron based machine and decided it
would be a good idea to build a Gentoo-amd64 distribution.
I think you'll find Gentoo runs quite well on amd64.
I've googled quite a bit but I would still like to ask a few questions, such
as:
- are there special points I should pay attention to or can I simply follow
the amd64 install instruction?
The Gentoo installation instructions are quite thorough, the gentoo guys
have done a fantastic job with them. I have a friend who is a complete
Linux newbie and she was able to build her amd64 distribution without a
lot of trouble.
- As far as I understand there are still lots of programs that won't compile
in 64 bit. What will happen if I try to emerge such a program?
- it seems most of the multimedia codecs still are 32 bit. Can you use these
on a 64 bit distro?
For those with only 32-bit programs available (Flash is the big one,
IMHO) there are special 32-bit binaries you can download and run without
compiling.
- other 64 bit distributions (I've downloaded SuSE and Kubuntu) will allready
have dealt with most compatibility problems. Should I learn more about 64 bit
specificities before attempting to build a Gentoo-64 system?
I don't know of any real showstopper issues with the 64-bit version that
I have seen on my own Athlon 64 laptop, so I don't expect you to have
any major problems. I would say the biggest pain I've ever found with
any linux distro is video card drivers, especially the high performance
ones or newer ones. or maybe that's just me. Good luck and if you need
any help, I'll be glad to answer any questions.
Thanks for any advice.
Thierry
--
Mark Haney
Sr. Systems Administrator
ERC Broadband
--
gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
