is fedora a 64 bit operating system
 

i know FC3 supports the AMD 64 bit processors but is it an actual 64 bit operating system? and if not, are any other linux OS's 64 bit OS's. I'm gonna buy a new computer an i was thinking about getting an AMD Athlon64 CPU.

thanks for any feedback

SuSe has a 64 bit version
Gentoo has a 64 bit version

Fedora Core 3 has a version for AMD64 on a DVD!!! I tested it out almost a month ago and it is a true 64bit OS... Other options that you can try on your AMD64 (as a native 64bit OS) are: Ubuntu, Debian, Novell SUSE Pro 9.2, MandrakeLinux, VLOS (will be out soon due to some bugs), and of course, Gentoo... So far, I have tried Fedora Core 3, Ubuntu, Debian, and Gentoo on my AMD64. Will have to check out SUSE 9.2 if I can get my hands on the 64bit version. ;)

y2k

Yes. Fedora does have a 64-bit version. Cores 2 and 3 do 64-bit. I'm not sure about core 1. You can get it here . Just click download server or mirrors on the menu on the left. I suggest using the mirrors because it has some ftp servers. "Download server" is just http downloads.


edit: core 1 does have a 64-bit version. On all 3 cores, click "x86_64" for the 64-bit version.

I've used Fedora 2/3 and SuSE 9.1 64 bit. In all cases, I went back to the 32 bit OS. It was just too quirky once you started to install packages from othe sources, such as Xine, DVD playback, etc. I continue to try it with each new release in hopes I can prove myself wrong.

That said, I also did not see very much, if any, performance enhancement when moving from 32 to 64. Perhaps this is because most 32bit Linux distros are already well optimized? I use my computer for email, browser and I watch movies and watch on-line movie clips a lot. That's the bulk of my PC use, so maybe that has something to do with it. But, it didn't seem faster to me.

In sum, I really couldn't see the advantage of 64 over 32 and actually found it more difficult to maintain. That's my two cents...

AMD Athlon 64 3000+
512 RAM