I've had an amd64 desktop since a little after Christmas last year - and had allot of playing with 64 bit Linux. Nigel Nguyen wrote:
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Hi all,
I gonna get a new desktop with AMD64 cpu. However, I just wonder what distro will be best fit for it ? So far, I got two recommendation:
1> Yoper as it customize for i686-or-higher (but personally, I don't think i686 will be in par of amd64 arch)
Stuff compiled against i686 will work no question (part of the beauty of amd's 64 bit chip opposed to intels - who have now stolen the idea from amd) but it is slow. Not really that much slower at all than say an equivalently clocked amd-xp but *much* more speed is possible --snip--
- - Will there be a significant improvement if I compile in 64-bit mode rather than 32-bit with arch=athlon-xp and sse2 enable ?
Yes compiling in 64-bit mode (CHOST=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu) gives significant speed advantages. I never got around to doing definitive benchmarks - but I always seemed to get around or above 2 mins advantage on compiling a similar kernel.
- - If I compile in 64-bit mode, will I be able to install some 32-bit apps on top of that as I heard that some plugins like flash / wma /wmv are not yet availabe for 64-bit & some apps neither (OOo & Cedega/WineX)
With the default installation on Gentoo, it installs 32 bit "emulation libraries" which allow you to run 32bit things (typically you'll end up with /lib and /lib64). Occasionally you'll come accross broken packages and all sorts of problems but the situation is a whole lot better than when I first started experimenting almost 12 months ago. A quick note also - Gentoo systems teach you all about the insides of the system but take allot of time to get going well (especially compiling things like xfree and kde/gnome/etc.). However Gentoo is very hard to beat in terms of speed and customize'ability. Often it also likes to install the newest of the new packages, which can occasionally break things - so it can take a lot to keep it going well. In my old age (sic) I've become slightly paritial to already made distributions such as Ubuntu that work without as much trouble - but are still compiled for amd64. So the tradeoffs are - a distribution that is unbeatably fast, slow to setup but teaches you everything about the insides vs. a slightly slower system - thats quick to setup but doesn't teach you much at all. Try Gentoo first ;).
Thanks lots in advance, Happy holidays, Nigel