[linux] 64-bit linux (and my ode to Gentoo!)

[Garrett Cooper]

Peter,
    What I meant is application support since many of the items in the 
deb, RPM, even Slackware (?) binary packages collection-to my 
knowledge-are still optimized for IA-32 platforms.
Debian: http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/ia64/release-notes/ - Only 
Sarge.
Redhat doesn't list anything about 64-bit computing I could find off the 
bat and couldn't find any quick links to anything; didn't check Fedora's 
section.
SuSe does, but to which extent I do not know...
Ubuntu: Judging by the support on their site (somewhat rudimentary), I 
don't know if they have 64-bit support.
Slackware-didn't see it but I'm sure you could do it nicely with a lot 
of headaches. If it's not accessible via slapt-get (which would most 
likely be x86 compiled support binaries only), you would have find your 
sources and compile stuff from scratch with the relevant optimizations 
builtin (which I note is more difficult than Gentoo).
    Considering that all you have to do is get the proper stage for 
amd64, setup your compiler properly, change your profile to the amd64 
profile, and-I suggest-start from stage 1 to get the most out of your 
hardware, everything should work nicely. Compiling does take a while, 
but for a working system if you prefetch all of the sources, you can 
have a system up and running with KDE and the latest version of Xorg, 
Xmms, Mplayer, Mozilla/Firefox & Thunderbird in one night. So, all you 
do is setup your stuff, go to sleep, and it will be done. That's the 
whole secret behind Gentoo really ;). Plus the portage flags beat the 
heck out of banging your head against the wall trying to find out why 
some sort of support isn't available in a binary package.
    Sure, I hated Gentoo a couple months ago, but some things have 
changed and now since I'm past the initial setup stages I have had to 
make little modifications for months and I'm running many 'unstable' 
packages with Japanese support (easy setup through SCIM and Anthy), and 
XFCE. Plus most questions are answered through the forums in less than 2 
days if you have an issue and any compiling issues are generally fixed 
within 12-48 hours of a new version release from what I have seen.
    Just to give you an idea of what I have installed, here's my 'world' 
package list: http://students.washington.edu/youshi10/linux/world.txt 
and my world ebuild list and dependencies: 
http://students.washington.edu/youshi10/linux/emerge_world.txt. There's 
a bit more, but most configuration for portage is simple to setup once 
you get it down and I love this package system a lot more than I did 
Redhat, Debian, Slackware or FreeBSD's maintainence system. But to each 
their own and whatever floats your boat.
    Disclaimer: there are people who have had issues with the 64-bit 
platform that I've dealt with on the Gentoo forums, but most of the 
issues occur with non-standard packages and games, so it is up to you to 
give it a shot.
-Garrett

peter woodman wrote:

> I've seen a lot of talk on this list about how 64-bit support is the 
> 'best' in Gentoo, and I'm curious what you all mean by this. Do you 
> mean fastest, or something else? If you are talking about speed, can 
> you point me to benchmarks? If not, what are you talking about, then? 
> Application support?
> -Peter