Hello I am a newbie and runnign pclinuxos on a mobo MERCURY P4VM800M7 and intel pr 506 2.66 ghz, 1mb cache , and 64-bit support my prime question is where do i get the kernel which is 64-bit and how can i compile it (2 optimise it )
i am willing to take risks but when i googled it i didnot find any clear answer as where would i get a 64-bit kernel and how do i compile it 2 optimizie it for my system , also can i do anything during kernel compiling or any thinng in general to speed up read and write in my fat partitions? i use fat partitions (windows extensively) so frequent data read - write is required

Building a 64-bit kernel starts by getting the source from someplace like kernel.org, the source is the same for all supported architectures.

http://kernel.org/

You might find the kernel-rebuild guide to be helpful in accomplishing the kernel building;

http://www.digitalhermit.com/linux/K...ild-HOWTO.html

By reading both the kernel-rebuild guide and the documentation found in the extacted kernel source you should be able to tune the kernel to your hardware. It may take a few tries to build a working kernel tuned for your system, but that's part of the learning process.

Start by installing a distro of your choice, most provide x86_84 installation media.

http://distrowatch.com/

Thanks LENARD i lil jsut start downloading the KERNEL and start the process and since its going 2 need several tries , i would really admire ur close assistance ,
I LOVE PCLINUX-OS i think its the DISTRO FOR ME and i am currently using it with ease , unfortunately it yet doesnot support x86_64 architecture so does this mean installing a 64-bit kernel on this distro wont make a change/??
b) when i install a 64 bit kernel will it speed up my system disregarding the fact that it uses only 32 bit programmes?
c)what about the FAT32 thing? do i need a module or something ??
--many honest and deep thanks

Sorry cannot help much with PCLINUX-OS as I don't use it.... and after a quick review the website, it does not look like 64-bit support is not available or not supported yet. It would be a better idea to choose a different one, both Knoppix and Ubuntu would make good choices for you judging by the PCLINUXOS website.

Building a 64-bit and running 32-bit applications is possible, many (like me) run a 64-bit OS with 32-bit applications. The kernel when built (correctly) will support both 64 and 32-bit applications as long as you have the needed libs required. You will need the 64-bit libs (gcc and such) to build a 64-bit kernel. The 64-bit kernel will be a bit faster then the 32-bit, how much I cannot say.

Yes you have to build support for the FAT32 filesystem (and any other filesystems) in order to access the information.

okiez so i have jsut downloaded the kernel from kernel.org (its 33kb! ) and the prepatch is like 5.3~6 mb [the file i doenloaded has the following link ]
http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kern...-2.6.16.11.bz2
! well would start the compilation , lets c what happens (by the way if i compile a 64-bit kernel it on pclinux os it would work then its no problem for me as which distro i should be using. Ubuntu and Knoppix both are not LOADED with programmes and i have dialup and not great deal of time 2 do the drills of downloading pakages+dependencies (even apt-get or yum) so i would stick 2 a loaded distro like pc-linux ..
thanks on my way to compilation....