amd64 and debian
 

hi i bought a new processor and it is amd 64. i would like to know how can i make a new installation of woody, to support amd64. any ideas?

I don't know how to do it from woody, but there is an amd64 port at www.nl.debian.org/ports/amd64. Perhaps you should look there?

There is an article about this here: http://lwn.net/Articles/113527/ Woody would be out of the question I think, but Sarge is do-able as described in the article.

You know you want to run Sid :D

I run Debian in full 64 bit mode with full 64 bit code (no 32 bit code). I do this on the 3200+ Processor with 1 Gigabyte of DDR. It's a speedy little beast I tell you.

If I compare it to my 3.06 ghz P4 running FreeBSD 5.3, my Debian box smokes it. Love my BSD all the same. Also, i found the Debian 64 bit distro faster than the 64 bit Gentoo distro, and the 64 bit FreeBSD version, but then again on Gentoo that might have been my own error. Anyway, very much worth doing. I'm very pleased. :Pengy:

what are the drawbacks to Sid?
I like Debian, but put Ubuntu on my new AMD64 machine becuase it was a full blown x86_64 distro.
Ubuntu is a pain in the neck, and I am sick of it.
All my previous Debian machines (including this laptop) have been woody or sarge.
I aborted my one try at Sid b/c of poor support for XFce (which I have stopped messing with since).

Are there better options for a AMD64 distro? I don't like Gentoo, but I am considering Fedora.

Fedora might be a option for you then. I have never tried the 64 bit version of Fedora. I would like to. I have it on my laptop which is also a AMD64. But ndiswrapper for my WiFi won't run 64 bit code.

Drawbacks to Sid? I don't think there are any in my opinion. I assume you are talking about this as a workstation/desktop. And if that is the case, Sid is a great choice. While it is "unstable" it really is quite stable. We are talking about Debian, so be it stable testing or unstable, it's quite stable. Stable is the extreme. Sid runs great. Only broke one package with constant upgrading (at least once a week) in the past year. Since you have already ran Woody and Sarge, you know what your in for. It's all the same. Just more bleeding edge packages is all. I love Sid. Never have tried Sarge. But I will most likely never go back to Woody...and frankly, I just love Debian. I have ran them all the majors...except Suse...and I always come back to my Debby.

But Fedora is nice too. And even though I run apt on Fedora as well, I just like Debian better. Maybe that is just me. But heck...what have you got to lose? Download the ISO image off the link and give it a whirl. You'll be glad you did just like me. Matter of fact, out of every GNU/Linux box I have ever had in my life, I love Debian AMD64 more than any of them.

I just built a brand-spanking new AMD64 box yesterday and installed the i386 2.6.8 kernel with a sarge net-install CD. Everything is working fine and I was going to go download/compile a K8 kernel from the sarge repositories when I came across this.

https://alioth.debian.org/docman/vie...d64-howto.html

:cry: So now I have to go download another Debian CD made for AMD64, format my hard drive, and re-install everything over again? :( And that SUCKS that I can't use OpenOffice without using that work-around. I find it a little surprising that in the 97% of the software that has been ported, OpenOffice has not. :scratch: Craptacular. Oh well, I guess I'll suck it up and take the plunge. :rolleyes:

True. That is not fun, however it is worth it. At least in my opinion. I think you'll notice a difference. I do. It's a pretty painless install I think.

As long as I can play Doom 3 at amazing speed :D Oh no, don't tell me that Enemy Territory, America's Army, UT2004, and the like aren't avaialable for amd64.....:eek:

Well I put in the install disk and installed sid amd64, but none of the sources were working! I looked at the Debian AMD64-HOWTO and used the source list they provided on there, but still it didn't work! I didn't feel that there was much merit to a system that I couldn't install packages on, so I re-formated and went back to the i386 sarge install and downloaded a K8 kernel.


I think I'm going to wait for Debian x86_64 to get a little more mature before I try it again. I'm really busy these days and although I don't mind spending some time hacking my system, with a full time job and grad school and everything else in my life I simply don't have the time to figure this out right now. At least I won't have any problems with 32-bit apps not working. :rolleyes: