I have an quad Intel processor with 8 gigs of RAM.
I have been told that I need a 64 bit operating system
to be able to use all 8 gigs of RAM.
Is there a version of Slackware that is 64 bits and is
NOT AMD, but can be run with an Intel quad processor ?
I should have ignored the salesman and demanded a 64-AMD,
but I was in a hurry, as usual, and had to get back to work.
Now I regret it.

As my favorite book says, "DON'T PANIC"

x86_64=amd64
because amd was the first to hit the market with a dual core processor. You should be fine with regular slack64. You might have heard about ia64 which is an intel architecture 64bit processor but that is only for servers.

Also yes you'll need a 64bit operating system to address all 8gigs of ram.

Yes I'm using it, it is called Slackware64 and can be downloaded from the various Slackware mirrors ftp://slackware.osuosl.org/pub/slack...re64-13.0-iso/ I am using a quad core Intel Q6600.

samac

For a load of more information, see for example X86_64 page from Wikipedia. Quoting that,

So there you go, like Xovan said. I agree that the naming could be more precise not to confuse computer buyers who don't have time to check what the mystical strings mean, but competition goes first it seems..

Slackware (64-bit version) isn't actually the only "64-bit Slackware"; before it was released, there were other "64-bit Slackwares", namely Slamd64 and Bluewhite64. Quite a few people seem to have a negative opinion about the latter one, especially now that Slackware released it's own 64-bit version. But have a look if you like..

You do NOT need a 64-bit OS to access all 8 GB, because you can use the PAE hack, if you wanted to.

For all intents and purposes x86_64 = amd64 (AMD) = em64t (intel). So, yes you can run slackware64 on it if the (non-server) processor supports 64-bit. There exists the Itanium ia64 platform for servers that is unique to intel, but if you don't use servers then you don't need to worry about it.

As has been said, while the default kernel of Slackware supports only up to 4 GB, you can compile your own kernel from source (included with Slackware) and activate support for up to 64 GB. The differences compared to a 64-bit system would then be (from a user's point of view):

32-bits with 64 GB support (the kernel option is called HIMEM or so):
All known applications run without modification
You can run more applications, but none of them can use more than 4 GB

64-bit system:
A small number of applications won't run, without a so-called multilib configuration (use the search function of this forum, if you want to know more about this)
A very small number of applications will not run even with multilib support. One example is Adobe Reader.

Overall I'd recommend the 64-bit variant, except you have specific requirements. Especially if you use programs, such as digikam/showFoto or the GIMP, you will notice a significant advantage in speed compared to the 32-bit variant.

gargamel

FYI, adobe reader runs fine here with multilib, also the firefox plugin (with nspluginwrapper).
I think that if you have the right 32bit support libs you can run everything.

the reason I had to go 64bit is editing 6 channel wavs 2 hours long, no way to do it on 32bit, but I simply didn't know what I was missing not using a 64bit os on my dual core

All the better, but how did you do it? I. e., what libs did you install in addition to what Alien Bob has prepared (or what you get by "massconvert"ing Slackware 32-bit stuff?
Because this is, what I did, and I Adobe Reader wouldn't run here. Other 32-bit stuff did.

Same reason here (dual core).

gargamel

Is the above a typo?
You are saying that Slackware64 cannot support more than 4 gigs without re-compiling the kernel? Is that correct?

Ooops, of course, it's a typo, I apologise!!!
I was going to say, that 32-bit Slackware stock kernel doesn't support more than more 4 GB!

Thanks, cwizardzone, and sorry!!!

I edited my original post, and corrected this mistake.

gargamel

on the early release of alien bob's compat32 libs didn't work also for me, I needed two additional compat32 libs, but alien bob added them later: if you install/upgrade now the packages alienbob provides (and the updated compat32-tools) you should be ok.
I posted a topic about it here

While we are on the typo front, is there any chance of changing that to something like 'because AMD was first to market with a 64 bit extension of the x86 architecture (and Intel was still wasting its time trying to push the Itanium on an unwilling market and thus didn't have an interest in cannibalising its own, struggling, 64 bit market).

Or, something.