Best distro for AMD64 SMP?

Okay guys, here's a question for you: I am going to get a new X2-based rig shortly and want to put an AMD64 distro on there. I have been using Linux for about a year and a half, but it's all been on i686 systems.

If anybody has had a good time with a 64-bit distribution, please recommend it to me. I am currently running OpenSuSE 10.0 on my laptop, BTW.

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I use FC4 x86_64 and with the exception of a few packages which are not 64bit friendly everything works GREAT

Ubuntu, SuSE and many other distros also have 64bit versions.

Any of the major distributions should work fine.

Good Luck!

Reply to linux_0

I heard Ubuntu had a LOT of problems with the 64-bit SMP version. I was wanting to run that on my box but after reading about the freezing/locking up problems on Ubuntu Forums, I decided to ask here and see if there were hiccups with any other distributions.

Maybe I will get FC4 (well, probably 5 by the time all my stuff gets shipped) or SuSE for 64-bit then.

Thanks for the advice. I was kind of worried about app support.

Reply to MU_Engineer

You can grab FC4 x86_64 here:

http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/c [...] 64-DVD.iso

In my experience it has been very stable and I've had no problems I haven't been able to solve.

There are many RPMs for it, it's designed to run both 32bit and 64bit programs and is updated quite frequently

You can also triple boot too, FC4+SuSE+whatever_else

Reply to linux_0

Thanks. I'll give it a whirl when I get my new rig (can't burn DVDs with this laptop.) I'll let you know how it goes.

Reply to MU_Engineer

I can send you the DVD if you want

Reply to linux_0

I sit on a 5Mbps cable connection and have a roomate that can burn DVDs. He owes me one for saving the data on his Windows machine a few times with a Live CD

Reply to MU_Engineer

Quote :

I sit on a 5Mbps cable connection and have a roomate that can burn DVDs. He owes me one for saving the data on his Windows machine a few times with a Live CD

Hehe

Speaking of Live CDs, have you tried the Knoppix Live DVD?

3000+ packages IIRC VERY nice.

Unfortunately there is no official 64bit version :-(

Reply to linux_0

Nope, never tried the Knoppix live DVD. I have tried Knoppix, but it was a CD and it was a long time ago (v. 3.2 or 3.3, if I remember correctly.)

Reply to MU_Engineer

It has improved quite a bit since version 3.2

The DVD version is the same as the CD except it has a LOT more stuff.

Here are the package lists:

http://spare2.com/packages.txt

http://spare2.com/packages-dvd.txt

Reply to linux_0

Downloading the live CD as we speak. Im going to try my hand at some Linux I played around with Linux a long time ago when G4 was Tech TV. Im downloading FC 4 also. I do have one question is there a way to update FC I have FC 3 from a previous attempt. Is there a way to upgrade it to FC4?.

I miss my 6mb Comcast connection. I move to the Hills and all they have is 1mb downloading at 40k at the most

Reply to Nebby

Quote :

Downloading the live CD as we speak. Im going to try my hand at some Linux I played around with Linux a long time ago when G4 was Tech TV. Im downloading FC 4 also. I do have one question is there a way to update FC I have FC 3 from a previous attempt. Is there a way to upgrade it to FC4?.

I miss my 6mb Comcast connection. I move to the Hills and all they have is 1mb downloading at 40k at the most

:-D

You can upgrade FC3 i386 to FC4 i386 but sometimes the upgrade doesn't go 100% smoothly.

You can also upgrade FC3 x86_64 to FC4 x86_64 -- again upgrading it tricky sometimes.

You cannot normally upgrade from i386 to x86_64 or vice versa.

If you do not have a lot of data to backup I would say do a clean install of FC4 from scratch.

If you have an AMD64 CPU then FC4 x86_64 will be 25-70% faster than the i386 version.

If you have an Intel EMT64 CPU then it will be 1-10% SLOWER in x86_64.

A word of caution x86_64 does sacrifice SOME compatibility for performance.

It is a little bit harder to install certain packages from source and SOME software does not officially support x86_64 or may not work 100% correctly -- however x86_64 can use BOTH 32bit and 64bit applications -- you just have to know when to compile something as 64bit or 32bit or BOTH.

If you stick to up2date / yum / RPMs you should be fine

Reply to linux_0

The 64-bit version of OpenSuSE 10.0 is a bit quicker than the 32-bit version on AMD 64-bit machines. By the seat of my pants, it feels like maybe 10% or so, but that's just subjective. I haven't used Linux on an Intel 64-bit machine so I don't know.

Reply to MU_Engineer

It is hard to determine how fast an OS really is.

It's easier to get an idea of how fast an OS feels.

AMD64 CPUs running Linux x86_64 are generally 25-70% faster in many benchmarks because they are true 64bit CPUs.

Intel x86_64 CPUs are slower in 64bit mode because they "emulate" 64bit mode using 32bit instructions. Intel IA-64 CPUs like the Itanium are true 64bit CPUs and perform well in 64bit but not very well at all in 32bit mode because it has to be emulated. If I remember correctly IA-64 CPUs do 32bit emulation in software.

As to how much real world performance that translates into it is hard to say.

IA-64 and x86_64 they are quite different by the way.

Reply to linux_0

Ever tried gentoo? I was a big fan of it last year, but when I got my new computer I haven't had the time to sit around and compile everything on my new one. SMP is flawless in it, plus its optimized for your computer (you know gentoo is completely source based).

Reply to dragabain

Gentoo is great but requires a lot of work :-D

It takes a while to compile everything.

Reply to linux_0

Quote :

IA-64 and x86_64 they are quite different by the way.

Hee hee hee. They sure are. And as far as the actual speed, I have seen very few benchmarks of 64-bit application performance, especially Linux 64-bit applications. Most review sites are heavily game-oriented and must use Windows to do their benchmarking on as that's what the games and benches run on. There are exceptions, but those are not that common. XP 64-bit is behind Linux in commercial application and driver availability as much as Linux is behind W2K/XP in those areas (and there is very little for free software compiled for XP x64.)

Who knows, maybe once Vista ships, we'll see how AMD's 64-bit execution compares to Intel's.

Reply to MU_Engineer

Quote :

IA-64 and x86_64 they are quite different by the way.

Hee hee hee. They sure are. And as far as the actual speed, I have seen very few benchmarks of 64-bit application performance, especially Linux 64-bit applications. Most review sites are heavily game-oriented and must use Windows to do their benchmarking on as that's what the games and benches run on. There are exceptions, but those are not that common. XP 64-bit is behind Linux in commercial application and driver availability as much as Linux is behind W2K/XP in those areas (and there is very little for free software compiled for XP x64.)

Who knows, maybe once Vista ships, we'll see how AMD's 64-bit execution compares to Intel's.

Check these out:

http://www.linuxhardware.org/artic [...] ode=thread

http://www.anandtech.com/linux/showdoc.aspx?i=2163

http://www.intel.com/performance/d [...] /em64t.htm

http://spare2.com/bench/index.html

On the last one FC i386 is on the left and FC x86_64 on the right

Reply to linux_0

Quote :

Okay guys, here's a question for you: I am going to get a new X2-based rig shortly and want to put an AMD64 distro on there. I have been using Linux for about a year and a half, but it's all been on i686 systems.

If anybody has had a good time with a 64-bit distribution, please recommend it to me. I am currently running OpenSuSE 10.0 on my laptop, BTW.

As you already use Suse 10 then Suse 10-64 would seem the logical choice. I already use Suse 10-64 on an X2 and Suse 10-32 on a P4 478. They are both stable and work well. Obvously the X2 64bit PC is much slicker. I had to instal the Nvidia driver from source but it was easy. Didn't have to mess with kernel sources as this was already set up.

Give it a whirl I say.

Reply to gmar

Quote :

Okay guys, here's a question for you: I am going to get a new X2-based rig shortly and want to put an AMD64 distro on there. I have been using Linux for about a year and a half, but it's all been on i686 systems.

If anybody has had a good time with a 64-bit distribution, please recommend it to me. I am currently running OpenSuSE 10.0 on my laptop, BTW.

As you already use Suse 10 then Suse 10-64 would seem the logical choice. I already use Suse 10-64 on an X2 and Suse 10-32 on a P4 478. They are both stable and work well. Obvously the X2 64bit PC is much slicker. I had to instal the Nvidia driver from source but it was easy. Didn't have to mess with kernel sources as this was already set up.

Give it a whirl I say.

FC5, SuSE and Ubuntu are all very good and all work pretty well in 64bit mode.

So is CentOS but not as cutting edge since it's the open source version of RHE.

Reply to linux_0

I tried Ubuntu for AMD64 but requires NVIDIA and even if I installed latest driver it still gives error. It could be my graphic card (7100 GS) related. However 64bit sometimes troublemaker for newbie...

Reply to gert

Hmm I liked Ubuntu... by SMP do you mean F@H b/c if your getting a new rig, Core based CPUs are much better...

Reply to amdfangirl

@ amdfangirl

He means Symetric Multiprocessing SMP i.e. more than one CPU Core. In the old days it meant more than one single core CPU.

BTW for F@H I thought the way to crunch that was to use CUDA on a decent spec Nvida card??

Message quoted 1 times
Message edited by audiovoodoo on 03-07-2009 at 12:42:41 PM

Reply to audiovoodoo

And quite clearly this is from the "old days." :lol:

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Reply to randomizer

randomizer wrote :

And quite clearly this is from the "old days." :lol:

Reply to audiovoodoo

audiovoodoo wrote :

@ amdfangirl

He means Symetric Multiprocessing SMP i.e. more than one CPU Core. In the old days it meant more than one single core CPU.

BTW for F@H I thought the way to crunch that was to use CUDA on a decent spec Nvida card??

I know, but if spend as much time down there are I do...

Reply to amdfangirl

Yeah, I thought it would be weird to have MU_Engineer asking a question like this after being a part of the forum for so long, then I saw Linux_0 recommending FC4? At that point there were huge red flags waving at me to check the date. Sure enough, we have yet another zombie thread!

-Zorak

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to Zorak

I thought it was weird back then when I kept on bothering the CPU forum about when the 780G was coming out.

Reply to amdfangirl

I better recommend Fedora 15 and Ubuntu 11.4 for the next time the thread gets woken up :lol:

------------------------------ $GNU_Linux=$Linus_Torvalds=AWESOME();

Need Linux help? PM me
Reply to linux_0

haha

Reply to amdfangirl

Zorak wrote :

Yeah, I thought it would be weird to have MU_Engineer asking a question like this after being a part of the forum for so long, then I saw Linux_0 recommending FC4? At that point there were huge red flags waving at me to check the date. Sure enough, we have yet another zombie thread!

-Zorak

Yeah, I thought it was odd that I asked the question...until I saw I asked it over three years ago. For the record, I think I went with OpenSUSE 10.0 as the first OS on that machine, which is still my main desktop albeit with a few upgrades. I upgraded OpenSUSE 10.0 to OpenSUSE 10.1, but 10.1 was a real dud and I switched to Gentoo. I ran Gentoo for about a year and a half until the whole developer brouhaha led to a stagnation of the OS and its packages in the latter part of 2007. I switched to Debian at that point and that's what I am running right now. I really like Debian and will stick with it as long as it supports whatever hardware I'm running. I doubt Debian will let out a dud release like OpenSUSE 10.1 because they'll just continually postpone the release until the OS works as it should. I also doubt they'll have a developer implosion like Gentoo since Debian is the oldest Linux distro behind Slackware, so I bet they've gotten the developer relations and organizational bugs worked out.

Message quoted 1 times

------------------------------ Upcoming Overdue Build: Dual-socket workstation, ~32 GB DDR3, OS on a fast SSD, high-end GPU, all wrapped up in a huge tower case. Coming H2 2011.

Yes, I am actually still running the Pentium III 1.0B Coppermine in the picture.
Reply to MU_Engineer

MU_Engineer wrote :

I also doubt they'll have a developer implosion like Gentoo since Debian is the oldest Linux distro behind Slackware, so I bet they've gotten the developer relations and organizational bugs worked out.

If they haven't then all the distros are in trouble :lol:

Reply to randomizer

I'll avoid SUSE just because I think they sold out. Whilst the rest of the community stood strong they caved and paid up to MS. Debian seems to be producing a fantastic base on which others build, the whole push towards ARM chips in the sub note market really could be the making of Debian / Ubuntu.

Reply to audiovoodoo

So what did happen to Gentoo? I started using it about mid-summer '08 and it has seemed pretty good to me so far. What was better about it before compared to now?

Thanks.

-Zorak

Reply to Zorak

The developers had a bit of a lovers tiff. Stallman bought them all flowers and they've now pretty much kissed and made up. A few of the really hormonal ones left the game to work on other projects. [/Abridged]

Reply to audiovoodoo

Cut down on the basement-ness plz, lol

Reply to amdfangirl

If you ever end up working in a development team the accuracy of that above comment will hit home. Code wars really are like relationships gone bad.

[Off Topic]
I don't know how much longer we'll have a basement BOM seem to have decided they want us out. A new site admin has been appointed and he's told us all to behave even down there. We're still pushing the bounds of taste and seeing who will be the first to get banned.

I've warned them it's best to keep us away form the noobs and fanboyz - an evicted Wingding really is a scary thought...
[/Off Topic]

Reply to audiovoodoo

You'd think that after all this time that Other would have been renamed by now. It would solve some of the problems with n00bs I'd say. Not the ones with unfixable stupid, but some.

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Reply to randomizer

There have been a lot of suggestions, including that and also a warning pop-up when creating any new thread. I'm concious of thread jacking here so if people want to talk about the other just drop me a PM... or be brave [/End of thread jacking]

Reply to audiovoodoo

randomizer wrote :

You'd think that after all this time that Other would have been renamed by now. It would solve some of the problems with n00bs I'd say. Not the ones with unfixable stupid, but some.

Call it the basement.

Message quoted 1 times

Reply to amdfangirl

What about the Great Pit of Carkoon?

Reply to randomizer

amdfangirl wrote :

Call it my downfall.

Fixed for accuracy

Reply to audiovoodoo

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