Chris Alvarez wrote:
Hello allI have an AMD64 and have been running gentoo compiled entirely for 64 bit mode for about 5 months now (as a side note i have also run debian and redhat on an IA64 a while ago but it loooks like you are more interested in the x86_64).
I was wondering if any of you has used some Linux distro in a 64-bit
processor. I was planning in building a comp with an Athlon 64 FX-53 and
I wanted to run Linux in it(SuSE 9.1 Pro or Fedora Core 2, preferably, I
am open to other options). I have heard that Linux drivers and softare
in 64-bit are not in a mature development stage yet. I wanted to hear
some thoughts on that.
As far as which distro to use, if you don't want to use gentoo then i would recommend SUSE, they have good x86_64 support and the things i have seen make it look like a nice setup (i have heard of more problems with Fedora and some problems with Mandrake). But if you really want to get the most out of the 64 bit environment i would strongly recommend gentoo. Contrary to popular belief it is not that difficult to install and use, and it is by far the best support for 64 bit linux right now. It will seemlessly handly having a 32 bit libs directory for running 32 bit programs, their kernel has many very good 64 bit patches applied, they have a very active 64 bit development and user community, and there are a lot of programs that are not fully 64 bit ready and so SUSE won't have packages built for them but there are many time where you can compile the code (sometimes with minor changes) and get it to work and in those cases portage makes that process painless (especially when other people do the work to get it to compile and all you have to do is get the ebuild.)
As far as the Linux 64 bit experience in general: If you want basic functionality then you will have it and it will work great. X11 is depreciated on gentoo's x86_64 and the default is xorg which works great. I REALLY hope you have an nvidia graphics card because ATI doesn't even begin to have good 64 bit drivers whereas nvidia has been steadily developing theirs and the newest drivers added the long awaited 3d acceleration for 32 bit games in a 64 bit environment. For many things (Flash, Openoffice, Games, etc) you will have to use 32 bit libraries because there are still few people compiling 64 bit versions of things (the big exception with games is Unreal Tounament 2004 has a 64 bit linux install).
In general everything works really well, reiserfs is stable as of 2.6.3 kernel (oh yeah, you have to use a 2.6 kernel, 2.4 just doesn't cut it in 64 bit world) and i don't notice any major problems on my setup. Everything is stable and getting more and mroe support every day. Programs like openoffice are making large strides towards 64 bit compatability and a lot of people are buying AMD64's so the support is getting better and better. Wheter you go with SUSE or Gentoo you should have a fairly easy time getting things to work, and you will be happy with the speed and stability.
-Chris
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