what's the best distro for AMD64?
 

yeah, it's probably so subjective it isn't even worth asking, but i figured i would anyways. i put together a computer recently using the Athlon 64 proc, played with WinXP 64bit edition for a little bit, and then got FreeBSD up and running on it. but, figure i'd triple boot a Linux as well, so i can see which Unix-based system i like better.

from what i can gather most any distro of Linux these days has a 64bit version, so i'm curious if anyone has any opinions which one performs best for 64. i don't care for bells and whistles, i figure as long as i can install 64versions of my favorites from packages (e.g. KDE, Firefox, Thunderbird), ... or at least compile from source, (all this without worrying about dependancies) i'll be euphoric.

It really depends on what you want to do with your Linux. Here are some Linux distros that have 64bit that I know off: Fedora Core 3 (only on DVD), Debian (Sarge/Sid), Ubuntu, Novell SuSE 9.2 (on first DVD), MandrakeLinux, and of course Gentoo... Novell SuSE comes with KDE as a default desktop and all of them have firexfox and thunderbird. If not, you can always install it once you have the system up!

y2k

I have Debian-Sarge installed at work on AMD64.
I've been working on it for 3 months already. So far, no faults.

Re: what's the best distro for AMD64?
 

I would say that Gentoo might be the one for you. This will allow you to compile everything especially for ur processor without much hassle. Installation can be tricky and takes forever but if you follow the manual you will be OK, seeing as how you have used BSD then you obviously have some Unix knowledge, so you will be fine.

I recommend Gentoo mainly because of Portage, "emerge packagename" will compile and install any program you want to use and all of the dependencies are taken care of too, best package management tool around IMO. Some programs can take ages to compile, but better than using binaries as you will have x86_64 optimized programs.

ahh cool. thank you for the responses so far. I've heard of Gentoo... i might try that one out. come to think of it, i was going to ask for one that has a similar system to FreeBSD ports, but i forgot. what you describe sounds like what i have in mind.

He just "forgot" to mention about compilation of Gentoo. :)
I prefer building personal nuclear reactor better;)

If you have a spare few hours and just follow the manual there is nothing to worry about

gentoo compile time isn't that bad on an A64

I use open source since 2001 and cannot call myself newbie and have tried to compile Gentoo twice already. Never with positive result. And I know how to read, thank you very much.

GENTOOOOOO !!!!!!

dude,, gentoo on the AMD64 rocks HARD !

i did a stage3 install and only came across one problem, Xorg-x11 refused to compile. so i booted Knoppix, had a look around the gentoo forums, and found the answer in seconds...

before emergeing Xorg-x11, do an "emerge --oneshot libtool"
as promised, after that Xorg-x11 compiled prefectly.

its super stable, super fast, the AMD64 portage tree is almost as big as the 32bit portage tree, and if something hasnt been ported to amd64 yet, you can get it with ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" emerge the_32bit_program.
and boom.. its installed, and linked againsed your 32bit compatability libraries.

Gentoo... it was the best 32bit distro, its still the best 64bit distro provided you know to look to the gentoo forums for help.

I've installed Gentoo a couple of times, a stage 3 install on an 800MHz which took around 4-5hrs no troubles at all and I've done a stage 1 install on a 3GHz HT with 1.5GB RAM in probably about the same time. It's super easy if you do it on another computer via ssh so you can have the handbook sitting in front of you, couldn't go wrong if you tried :)

i figure worst case scenario, i'll switch to another distro that was suggested.

dang, i'll keep that in mind :)

just curious, do you like Xorg better than XFree86, or was that what was recommended for Gentoo?

dang... that answered my next question! :D i had a few Win apps i wanted to run with Wine. but it wouldn't install on FreeBSD because it isn't compatible with amd64 (yet?). thank you, that helps out a lot.

lol! yes, i've come to become experienced at finding answers to my questions.

coo.

i actually have to read a book and later will work on my Resume on my Windows box... so i have no problem with a lengthy install time.

X.org is the recommended X system for Gentoo, I just did a quick search at packages.gentoo.org and couldn't find xfree86 in portage but I'm sure there's an ebuild for it somewhere out there if it's not in the official portage tree :)

I'm using xorg 6.7 and it's pretty good, I can't use 6.8 due to ATis awful drivers