linux on athlon 64 3800+
 

for christmas im getting an athlon 64 3800+... this is going to be my first new processor in the past 3 years... is there any specific distro i want to use for the athlon 64?

You should use a 64 bit distro like Suse, Fedora, ...
I am using Suse Linux 10.0 64 bit and it installed without any problems.

Debian also has 64bit version

You don't need to use a 64 bit version. 32 bit will work just fine and you will get a lot more choices in software. For instance: Opera does not offer a 64 bit version of their browser.

64 bit is faster for sure, especially booting up. Ubuntu is decent and cutting edge if you want to use 6.04. It is beta and a little buggy however.

I have pretty much the same question, but I would also know what the pitfalls are of trying to run non-64bit programs in a 64 bit distro. Is it possible?

Also, I would assume that running a 32bit distro on a 64bit CPU destroys any benefits gained from having the 64bit chip. Is this correct?

The main programs I need are Transgaming's Cedega, Firefox and probably The Gimp. Everything else is just extra.

You can run 32bit programs from within a 64bit distro. At least you can in debian. You have to intsall the 32bit libs and run your 32bit stuff in a chroot environment. I looks kind of complicated to set up, and I haven't tried it yet.

My only problem so far with my 64bit is that w32codecs and real media codecs don't work on 64bit system (hence the w32), so you can't play windows (.wmv) or real (.rm) media files.

But do other file formats work? Like .mpeg and .avi? Since that is what most of the media I watch is in.

Yes, most everything else works including avi, mpeg, mp3, ogg, etc.

So each softwaere packages to have a 64bit version of it to work on a 64 bit distro? Are most major things updated to work on a 64 bit distro? I'm just trying to decide which I want to install. I use my computer as a personal computer. For everything from programming to text editing to games to downloading (azureus) to web browsing to image processing. What would you suggest I install?

I would say go for the 64bit debian or suse. I have heard that fedora 64bit is still a little buggy. I am using debian 64bit, and it is rock solid. I can't remember the last time I had to reboot. Everything works great except for the propietary media stuff mentioned above. If you think that you will need to use .wmv or .rm, then you can set up a 32bit chroot.

where can i download the 64 bid debian? preferablly torrent

It's here
http://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/un...e-amd64/bt-cd/
I reccomend the net install CD which only has what you need to get a working installation. Then you can download the rest later. Or you can just get all 13 CD's if you want, but you really only need the first one (or the net install).

yeah, i had gotten to to that page too, but never saw a distro that needed 13 cds... what is your guys oppinion for the best 64 bit distro? what im looking at now is

suse
ubunto
debian

and cant figure out which to choose!

Go with Ubuntu 6.04. You only have to download one cd and it works well.

You don't have to download all of the CD's. Just download the netinstall. It's like 150MB. That's all you need. Ubuntu is just debian with fewer choices. Maybe good for newbies cause it is easy to install, but debian is still the champ IMHO.