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

[Jesse Weigert]

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They have 64bit support, but I haven't tried it since I don't have an
AMD64.


Jesse Weigert
(206) 934-9916

PGP key: http://students.washington.edu/jessew/jesseweigert.asc



Garrett Cooper wrote:
| 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
|
|
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