Hello
Since I'm using linux, I'm a slacker. Now someone offers me a 64bit computer and I wish to use slack with it. The matter is that slack is only (officially) for the x86.
I found several others distros with a slack approach (Zenwalk, Arch, Frugalware...) and a port of slack named slamd64.
Could the slackers here, owners of a 64 bits box, tell me which distros they're using? Especially does anyone ever tried slamd64?
Thx

I've only had an AMD64 for about a month. I've tried the following 64bit distros: FC5, SuSE 10, Kanotix, Ubuntu, Gentoo and Slamd64. I personally liked Kanotix the best.

Slamd64 is nice, but you need to understand that it's a fairly recent project with limited resources. I had a few issues that appeared to be caused by packages not being compiled in a clean build environment. Not a huge deal, but annoying. If you're not compiling a lot of your own stuff that might not even matter to you.

After comparing the 64bit distros, I decided that what best meets my needs is still Slackware.

As jimX86 has said, slamd64 is still somewhat in it's infancy. It's getting better all the time and sooner or later will rival slack for the x86_64 platform (stability, slack-ness & packages).

It really depends what you want to do with your box - if you want a bit of a challenge in setup, then install slamd64 and have fun finding and fixing any problems you find (shouldn't be many these days from the 10.2b build). If you need a server with 700 days uptime, then perhaps stick with slackware.

You should also be aware of what drivers are available for your devices. nVidia do an x86_64 driver and include some 32-bit openGL compatibility lib support, but something like captive-ntfs does not play nice with the 64-bit kernel.

I've had no problems with 32-bit stuff installed into my environment, including wine and tls (for amsn, before i fixed the 64-bit tls) and if you're careful to make sure only 32bit stuff ends up in /lib & /usr/lib, while the 64-bit stuff ends up in /lib64 and /usr/lib64 ... you should have no problems!

If you just want to be up & go, then probably slamd64 is not the distro you want. Bi-arch systems are a whole new animal, so really, whichever distro you pick you will have to learn something about them eventually; slamd64 just takes the slackware-approach to learning

- Piete.

PS: on the plus side, all your slackware config files (/home, /etc and your kernel .config), including much of the modprobe-ness should still work once you recompile your old kernel in the new environment =D

I agree.
I have an AMD64 3200+ and still run 32 bit Slackware. I have a parallel installation of Slamd 64 and tried to
configure it like my Slack system. It´s a pain. I still struggle with ATI graphics drivers, dvd:rip won´t run, no flash in firefox, and so on.
Slamd is fast, ok. It boots quicker, kde starts very fast and applications open a second after you click, BUT Slack ist still fast enough
in 32 bit mode. As you can see on the homepage of Slamd 64, the developer hasn´t much time and money. It´s still a hobby project
and in my opinion not an alternative yet. If a basic slack system is enough for you, it´s ok and running stable, but if you want some
extras it´s better to try something else (or wait?).

I have an Amd64 4800+ dual core, with slamd64 (10.2)

(asus A8N-SLI Premium, 4Gb ram, asus nvidia GT6800)

It is very stable with an incredible speed.
It works as a server in a little office (apache, mysql, nfs, samba),
but is OK also for desktop apps (mozilla, openoffice, xine, etc).
(I can export the DISPLAY and work with openoffice on olds UNIX workstation).

VERY GOOD!

I have an Athlon 64 dual core and am still running slackware 10.2 but I have compiled a custom 2.6 kernel for the opteron with multiple processor support.

Slamd64 is promising but unfortunately , as has been said, has limited resources. It installed well and is very fast I have had problems with it at almost every stage and these have been difficult to sort out because the user base and support is limited.

My problems have included:
KDE crashing on logout - required KDE upgrade
Inability to print - eventually sorted out after extensive googling by a ghostscript recompile with ./configure --with-fontpath=/usr/share/ghostscript/fonts/
Openoffice would not run - took ages to sort out. Eventually I realised that the lib32 files were not installed. They are supposed to be in the /slackware/c directory but oddly they are missing from my installation cd.
I cannot compile a kernel because make menuconfig errors out.

I am not sure that it is worth struggling with these problems at every stage.

I have tried Arch64. Very nice ( and I am tempted to have a look at Arch itself) Problem here is that it aims to be pure 64 so there is a problem at present getting openoffiCe to work which from my point of view is a killer. Also non-open source binary distributed programs like skype will not run.

I think frugalware also has a problem with openoffice.

Sorry about the double post. Problem with the host server I think.