Hi,

Been googling a bit. Seems the only amd64 linux freely downloadable distros available are gentoo and freebsd. Is this correct?

there's also suse, mandrake, debian, fedora, and ubuntu...

i can't think of any more right now, but i'm sure there are...

i'm also sure there's several linux distributors that are currently working on their x86-64 ports...

freebsd doesn't count cuz it's not linux, it's unix...


also, you probably already know this, but it's worth mentioning (for those that might not know) that you can usually install your regular 32-bit distro on AMD64s without major problems... of course you wouldn't be taking advantage of the 64-bit extensions on the cpu, but at least your current 32-bit distro "will run"... this is nice for people that need to get their current distro up and running on the amd64 while they find a suitable native x86-64 distro or wait for an x86-64 port of their current one...

Near as I can tell Suse and mandrake are not freely downloadable. Never even heard of ubuntu, will have a look at that one.


Granted but it would still be a candidate for a non-microsoft OS.

Of course that's always an option. Not an interesting one but still an option.

both suse and mandrake offer free downloads...

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/ftp.php3

http://www.novell.com/products/linux...nal/downloads/

granted, i'm not 100% sure if the free suse is available for x86-64, but it might... i know that mandrake's x86-64 is freely available, though (or will be soon)...

here's the link: http://www.ubuntulinux.org

Well, may overlook it but it seems that the amd64 version of mandrake is NOT downloadable.

Suse still doesn't offer ISO but of course I could do a network install.

That ubuntu looks interesting but seems gnome centered and I was just thinking about switching over to KDE.

Still, you gave me some options to consider, thanks for that.

yeah, you're right... the thing is, AFAIK, what the mandrake people do is they make public releases available only after the paying customers have had exclusive access for a while... it's interesting, though, cuz the betas and release candidates are public... either way, there is an upside to this, and it's that the official public releases will be more stable than what the paying customers had gotten initially...

if you wanna play with one of the release candidates for mandrake 10.1 for x86-64 you can get it here:

ftp://ftp.ale.org/pub/mirrors/mandra...el/iso/x86_64/

and here's a review of 10.1 (x86-64):

http://lwn.net/Articles/117871/

but you sound like an experienced user and, well, mandrake might not be your thing anyways... personally, i don't like mandrake, even though i must admit it's what i started with - mandrake and red hat... but i've been a slackware user for a while and have had no real reason or desire to switch distros, at least on my pc... for the server i prefer debian, but that's another story... of course if i got a 64-bit pc then i'd definitely want to go for another distro, being that there is currenty no DECENT x86-64 slackware port available...

if i had to change desktop distro i'd probably go for ubuntu, as i like the ubuntu philosophy and i have been amazed by the excellent reviews it has received from everywhere... i'm also already familiar with debian so ubuntu would probably have a very small learning curve for me, i guess... i can also tell by the ubuntu newsletters that the developers are very hard workers and are always improving the distro - it's also quite community-driven (it has the debian spirit), which is something very nice... and they actually stress the fact that they will always keep ubuntu completely free of charge... i'm sure that when the new release is out i'll give it a shot - of course not exclusively, i'll dual-boot ubuntu and slackware... ;-)

Quote:

Suse still doesn't offer ISO but of course I could do a network install.

yeah, i've wondered why they don't provide (full) CD ISOs... they say it's so that you only download what you need - but then they do provide a full DVD ISO so i'm not sure what the deal is... anyways, it's cool that they do give you access to an x86-64 version for free...

NOTE: i believe i've read somewhere that you can download the DVD ISO and then create CD ISOs from it so you can do local installs with them without ever having to use the network again...

one thing i can say is that suse always gets AWESOME reviews, that's for sure...

Quote:

That ubuntu looks interesting but seems gnome centered and I was just thinking about switching over to KDE.

true, but it might be a temporary situation, though... from what i've read ubuntu already has KDE available in it's universe:

http://www.ubuntulinux.org/support/d...ation/faq/kde/

on a side note, i'd like to invite you to try XFCE, if you haven't already... i've found it to be a great window manager, light and fast like fluxbox, yet visually appealing like kde/gnome... of course with a 64-bit CPU a light window manager might be the last thing on your mind right now, hehe...

Quote:

Still, you gave me some options to consider, thanks for that.

you're very welcome...

BTW, just curious: which distro are you currently using??

My desktop is currently without linux. The laptop is a dual boot XP pro/mandrake 10. I kinda like linux. Not ideal but a nice, newbie friendly workstation distro.

i just found a few more (freely available) distros with x86-64 ports:

http://www.lineox.net/

http://www.centos.org/

https://www.scientificlinux.org/


i also read that kanotix has released an x86-64 version of their live cd... it might be something to look at if you wanna play with the 64-bit cpu without having to install anything:

http://www.kanotix.com/

here's the release announcement:

http://kanotix.mipooh.net/viewtopic.php?t=5474