I've been highly disappointed with 64-bit support. The problem isn't Linux, I know. It's the third party support. Mainly Adobe flash and Sun Java browser plugin.

The first distro I tried on my new 64-bit system was Ubuntu, which was a loooong time ago. To my recollection, it was actually quite slow on my AMD Athlon64 X2 4800+. Nautilus had quite a few problems, and I'd have to force quit a lot of apps.

Ubuntu's not my favorite distro. In fact, on my family's 32-bit system back at home, I really liked the minimal distro ZenWalk. The only thing I felt was missing from it was Gnome. I think that's the kind of distro for me, but unfortunately distrowatch and linux.org don't list any minimal distros for 64-bit processors.

I tried using Gentoo, but the problem I had with that was I felt like I was just being tossed into this rushing stream and couldn't do anything on my own. I was just following documents. Not quite sure how to describe it. Basically, I was kind of lost. I mean I got the system up and running. I had X, gdm, gnome, and quite a few apps working in Linux. Then I got to the java plugin, and I got frustrated enough to scrap it.

So now I have no clue what to do. Should I try use ZenWalk, and not take advantage of my 64-bit processor, which seems to me would be a waste of money, or should I try to find solutions for my 64-bit problems? The thing I liked about ZenWalk, or maybe just the way minimal distros, is it gives you a base system to work with, and then I'd just use source for my programs.

Because of that, I thought gentoo would be the distro for me. I didn't get that feel at all when I finally got X and gnome working.

I use Debian, and am satisfied with the functionality of the free "gnash" flash movie player and browser plugins. In order to get around the Java plugin issue, I also have installed Konqueror which does not need a plugin to handle Java applets. Debian development of 64-bit applications such as OpenOffice is also well advanced.

A 64-bit version of Flash9 is certainly forthcoming. OTOH, you will lose very little observable performance efficiency by running 32-bit OSes on your 64-bit hardware. Does that mean that 64-bit hardware is not a good investment? No! If you feel the need to use applications currently not available on 64-bit, go ahead and wait a while. 64-bit application development will be the standard before your hardware is obsolete.

Debian is extremely suitable for this method of system management, as well as being the leader in defense of FOSS. If that is important to you, try it out.

I tried Debian once, and the thing about it is, it's not up to date. Need to do a LOT of upgrades.

Anyway, I was checking out distrowatch, and I discovered Paldo. Maybe this'll be very similar to my ZenWalk experience, maybe slightly better. I'm also going to check out ROCK linux.