64 bit distro question
 

I am soon going to be upgrading to an athlon 64. What is the difference between 64bit distros and the normal 32bit ones?

Sometimes it is just the amount of software that has been ported (if you are just talking about usability). Other times, it can be almost no difference, but the amount of processes the CPU can handle. For info on the amount of packages ported for one distro check out gentoo's website www.gentoo.org.

Regards,

Alunduil

64-bit is marginally faster than 32-bit, except that certain 64-bit applications, e.g. audio encoding, are significantly faster.

There are sometimes more problems with 64-bit versions.

Some software has not been released in 64-bit form.