Does anyone know if Suse 9.2 for x64 contains all packages compiled specifically for Athlon 64 architecture. If so does anyone know the approx speed increase % from using a i386 distro to using a x86_64 compiled distro.

I'm trying to decide whether to buy a Mac or get a Athlon 64 system and use Linux.

im interested in this also as i installed i386 by accicent over ftp on my athlon 64 system and think i should upgrade, just curious on peoples views?

Yes Novell has made the x86_64 ftp install available on their servers. You can find files in the /pub/suse/x86_64/current directory on your local mirror.

As for the question of speed increase i can say that i have not noticed any significant increase since moving to 64 bit linux, In fact the lack of 64 bit compatible browser plugins for flash and java make using 64 bit linux alot harder (lots of web sites dont work). Desktop users might want to wait for the rest of the world to catch up.

I am running Suse 9.2 on an AMD64 3500 and knew beforehand of the problems with Flash and Firefox. What I did was download and install the 32-bit version of Firefox which allowed me to use Flash and Java. Compared to my old Dell 1.3GHz pc this one boots up and opens programs faster than before. I purchased my system from Monarch Computers and am very happy with my choice.

Joe

Depending on what you are doing is where you will see increases. I you do any compiling from source you will notice a huge boost in compile times. I also see a few speed increases in a few apps such as Open Office.

Thanks for the responses. It seems like it is not even really worth upgrading to 64bit for Desktop Linux. Should probably stay with the Sempron.

I installed 64-bit suse 9.2 on my athlon64 2800+ and it is very fast. It is awesome. Even the ATI 64-bit drivers work great with my radeon 9600p. Why not use 64-bit if everything works the same or better? The worst case scenario is that you'll have to use a 32-bit program. From a price perspective, an athlon64 2800+ is only like $115.

Well, this is more like wishful thinking:
OO.org is still 32-bit, and the only posiible speed gains are coming from CPU architecture, not OS. In other words 32-bit apps will be as fast on AMD63 and 32-bit OS as they are on AMD64 and 64-bit OS.

desktop apps in general will not gain from 64-bit architecture.

Now linux is a free OS so even out curiosity I would install 64-bit linux..
Who knows you may have few apps (scientific, professional video editing, encryption) that actually benefit from 64-bitness and/or take full advantage of a new memory addressing above 4GB...

true indeed. though, if you do prefer running GNOME (like myself) this will screw up your install of evolution since it is has mozilla as a dependency. just be aware of this: either you go for flash/java and a 32-bit browser architecture (working), or you go for evolution (which being 64-bit cannot run jointly with a 32-bit dependency).

hoping someday the rest of the world (aka macromedia and jse) will catch up.