I d like to install linux on the upcoming hardware 64 bits and dual core chips , can anyone help or advise me on this item? please tell me whether many applications are compatible with such a setup
thanks
pumkindan

Anything that would work with a single-core 64 bit system will work with the dual core processors. The kernel should, however, have SMP support enabled.

This is not true. I have done a lot of testing with both dual core AMD systems and dual core Intel systems. A special kernel patch is needed to make these work in SMP mode otherwise you will have kernel panics everytime you try to boot. For the AMD dual-core side the latest Fedora Core 3 x86_64 kernel works, SuSE 9.3 professional with all updates applied works, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 with all updates applied works. I've only had SuSE 9.3 professional with all updates applied working on the dual-core Intel stuff. Stay away from nForce 4 motherboards on the AMD side when using dual-core, I've yet to get this to work. I have had very good results using the Tyan S2885 motherboard and dual-core opterons under linux. I had an nForce 3 professional system running dual-core opterons under Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 AS Beta 1 at one point (CentOS 4 should work just as well but make sure you are using the beta kernel or dual-core support will not be there). I have not been able to get the Tyan S2895 (nForce 4) motherboard with dual-core opterons working due to issues with the nForce 4 chipset. I must say that the performance on the AMD dual-core side is absolutely amazing and completely trumps the Intel dual-core Pentium 4 offerings. I should be getting dual-core Athlon X2s in soon for testing.

I had not heard that a kernel patch was required to make it work. However, given that, as far as I understand it, all software should readily work with these systems.

Could you point me to this "Special Kernel Patch"??? I have a friend who cannot get his system working without the kernel panics you mentioned.