I have been living in a cave and been away from Linux world for quite some time, and have really lost touch with what's going on
It is, however, time to get back in.

I was wondering if there is a 64bit version of Linux available. If so, what kind of hardware should I buy i.e Do I need specific motherboard or can I install it on a regular Dell dimension? Is there a wide hardware industry support that will allow me to choose devices from, and does 64 bit significantly increase the speed.

Thanks in advance for any help.

there is only one version of _linux_ and linux supports 64bits poccessors. dont know how helpful this was, but for what its worth...

64bit has improved performance forservers and theoreticaly media encoding

So you dont have a 64bit hardware setup already??
you have two options
AMD Athlon 64 (replaced the athlon XP, out performs theP4 in 90% of benchmarks
support our current 32bit windows xp and linux
but also lets you use a 64bit OS

the second is
Intel Itanium 2
pure 64bit processor very expensive server processor but all AMD s 64bit are far more approriate and efficient.


Most linux Distros have x86_64 versions availAble
suitable for AMD 64 chips (opteron, Athlon 64 and Athlon FX)
the IA64 version is for use in itanium chips)

interesting note
Microsoft has refused to make any new operating systems on IA64 and is choosing the AMD64 cpu's to be support with Windows XP 64bit edition next year