Thinking about switchign distro's from Gentoo... as nowadays I don't really have enough time to tweak around with it as I used too and I'd like something a bit simpler to use in those times i have some serious work to get done. I've had experience with Ubuntu, Gentoo, Madrake, and Red Hat. Now my eyes have turned towards Debian.

Stupid question from me is. On the site I see no x86-64 disk. It was my understanding that "ia64" is not that same thing as x86-64. Am I mistaken? Or is there no x86-64 version of Debian?

there's the AMD64 port, see here:

http://www.debian.org/ports/amd64/

There are no foolish questions.

There are currently two 64-bit intel-type implementations. iirc, they are "IA64," referring to proprietary Intel Xeon-type processors, and AMD64 (aka EM64T), which pretty much covers everything else, including 64-bit processors from Intel that are not Xeons. Unless you're running a Xeon-based server system, the Ubuntu 64-bit distro should work just fine for you.

[Sure, I'm a newb to Linux, but I do have 26 years of IT experience overall )

In my experience, Ubuntu has some performance issues. Though it is a very easy distro to use, I would prefer to avoid those issues if possible.

What do you mean by performance issues? It is definately slower than a true slimmed down debian install, is this what you mean or something more drastic?

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Dillius
>> In my experience, Ubuntu has some performance issues.

Which are...? No worse that any Debian-based distros, I'll wager....

>> Though it is a very easy distro to use

No argument here....

>> I would prefer to avoid those issues if possible.

I'd like to hear/read those issues.

Mind you, I'm not trying to make enemies. But, based on the research I've done thus far & my own 1st-hand experience, you could do a lot worse than Ubuntu (or even Debian), & little better (unless you're willing to devote *a lot* of your own time & effort to system-level coding.)

For myself, I'm willing to work with what the good people @ Ubuntu have come up with. What's *your* time worth?

Very good point once again.

I've simply heard people that I've talked with about it say it runs more "slugishly" than some other distro's. However, I have had no personal issues with this myself because the only systems I placed it on myself were very old anyways.

Perhaps I should give Ubuntu, or Kubuntu (I just can't give up KDE) another look.

Intel's Xeon processor do not use IA-64. Any 64-bit capability the Xeons have is EM64T.

IA-64 = Intel's 64-bit VLIW architecture that hasn't exactly been as great of a success as Intel would have wanted (Intel Itanium, Itanium 2)
AMD64 = AMD's 64-bit extension of the x86 architecture (AMD Athlon 64, Opteron, ...)
EM64T = Intel's implementation of AMD64 - essentially identical but with a different name... (some models of Intel Pentium 4, Celeron, Xeon)

Oops. Too much bourbon, not enough research.

Why can't you give up KDE? Granted I use KDE most of the time but If you worried about sluggish KDE is the #1 culprit. Some of the other enivronments are harder to set up and take some work but will be much more efficient and more more customizable.

IMHO, the window manager is nothing but eye candy. Gnome, KDE, fluxbox, ice... doesn't matter. What matters is how well the applications run. Aren't the apps really what it's all about?

Then again, maybe I'm showing my age. I remember when GUIs were unknown outside of closed facilities like Xerox PARC, so command lines were *it*. I remember when RAM was a dear and expensive commodity, and cassette tapes were used for programme & data storage, as disks (8-inch floppies!) were prohibitively expensive, and rigid media (hard disk packs) were only for room-filling mainframes. I remember when 'printing' meant echoing 40-column-by-25-line main RAM screen-buffer output to an AT&T ASR-33 Teletype(TM) terminal (with a paper-tape punch if you were lucky!). I remember when programmers were actually concerned with making their code tight and efficient (fit in a small space & ran fast; often written & almost always debugged in assembly language). It wasn't all that long ago. (Hey Bill Gates, remember 8K Altair BASIC?)

It's with a mixture of mild amusement and faint disgust that I listen to current-day users whine about the 'limitations' of today's computers & OSes. In 1978, I and almost all of my friends would have committed murder for 1/10th of the capabilities of today's systems.

You children don't know how lucky, or spoiled, you are. Consider yourselves spanked.

I totally agree, I just want it to work that way it was meant to. I don't neeed any flashing lights which in turn degrade system performance.

On another note, someone will alway complain about something, when they see what a system can do and want it to be that way. spoiled? definitely but that doesn't keep them from dreaming. I don't want a flame contest but I beleive if you need something that is like windows just use windows. If you want something stable and different use Linux the way it was meant to work, not some imitator.

Not about to flame, just venting. Computer coneheads, especially programmers, all too easily forget that the systems that built the foundation they work upon had very limited resources, and there are still those among us who remember those days and prize efficient code. (IMHO) cheap RAM and disk storage, while making possible immense strides in computing-for-the-masses, have made recent programmers both lazy and sloppy. The coders from the late 70s & early 80s would have been far more concerned not only with seeing to it that their code worked on the platform(s) it was intended for, but also that it worked *properly* i.e. that it was bug-free. I don't find that modern programmers (with a very few exceptions) have the same pride-of-ownership ethic that impels them to make software *efficient* and to fix bugs before release time rolls around.

Challenge: to you newcomers, let's see how clever you really are! Can you design and implement programmes that are so efficient that they will work *well, quickly and efficiently* in (to be generous) less than 25% of what current (late 2005) hardware offers you? Who can still write code that works well (fast & efficient) on an 80386 chip (I'll be generous and allow you 80387 floating-point support), less than 2 MB of main RAM, and less than 1 GB of hard disk space...? I don't think these kids today can do it. In fact, I don't think anyone under the age of 35 can do it.

Prove me wrong. :-P ;-)

I am not a programmer but I'm going to be. That is something that I would strive for. Making it efficient as possible. I guess I should do my programming on the old 486 I still have. not a 386 but you have to give the beginner a break. You should be ashamed to push something the way Microsoft does.

The xbox 360 has issues with an overheating power supply. If they did proper testing they wouldn't have that problem. Not software but an example. Then there is windows, holy hotfix Batman!

Peace,
Tom

The xbox power supply isn't the 1st & won't be the last example of under-engineered hardware making it to market. Anyone who has been through a decent high-school electronics shop class could have designed & built a better p/s. In fact, the design engineers usually do. But then the bean counters decide to go with something cheaper, and.... 'nuf said.