What distro do you use

[daonoir]

Im useing fedora 5 atm but its only a 32bit version and i want a version for my other comp amd 64 4400+ there is a 64 bit fedora but the only reason i use fedora is because thats what we use in my tutes but i find it has lost of probs.

what distros do you guys use.

And does anybody know the best distro for AMD 64 bit.

[vladi]

Currently I use Mepis 6.0. I was pretty happy with it until my network interfaces started screwing up. Mepis provides its own network utilities as part of the KDE Control Center, which are quite nice but seem to be buggy at least on my hardware - every time I boot what was previously eth1 is now eth0 and so on :S. I mainly stick to KDE based distros, but will be giving Ubuntu a go as soon as I can get my hands on some CDs since its interface looks really clean. As far as distros go, I'm basically just treading water until the Lenovo Thinkpads come out with Novell SUSE preloaded. At that point i'll throw Novell on the desktop, and if I like it then I'll buy a Thinkpad with it preloaded.

In the past I have used FC5, RHEL4 (we have it at Uni), Gentoo2005, Ubuntu5, Kubuntu6 and probably a few I am missing. Swapping a distro is almost as simple as just copying over your home directory, once you are accustomed with the various package management tools.

As far as 64bit distributions go, is there a real reason that you need to run a 64bit distro instead of a 32 bit one?

[slaine1]

I think the short answer is that there is no 'one' 64 bit version to use coz every distro has their own way of dealing with 32bit and 64 bit libs and where to put them.

I think you should just get a distro and stick with it.

I personally used gentoo 64. They used to have problems with running 64 and 32 bit environments. You basically had to create a whole new 32 bit chroot in order to run 32 bit stuff. And as far as I know, this is still how the debian distros do it.

Nowadays, I'm just lazy and run 32 bit ubuntu.

HTH.

[daonoir]

As far as 64bit distributions go, is there a real reason that you need to run a 64bit distro instead of a 32 bit one?

i have no video (mobo driver issue[sli prob]/ graphics card driver issue) and i have no networking (mobo driver issue) there are fixes but not for 32 bit :( (that i could find)

i had the same probs with BSD. Only fixes i could find were for linux so here i am trying to find the best distro. Personaly i think BSD sounds realy cool. Though i have never been able to get a fully working networked version. So linux it is.

Main reason i figured why not start from the top and work down getting a 64bit os seemed a good start (had win 64 but it sucked balls)

i have xp on this comp it is my gameing comp but has 600gig HDD space so thought why not file server ect. There for linux.

I also have a crappy old box for torrents and it only has 80gig so i need somewhere to store all my dl's.

I also want it as my home entertainment centre and will set up remote desktop shit l8r to the lappy.

But it has no networking, there for new distro ect. I figure i will still have to find all the drivers and shit but if im going to set it up i want to do it properly.
Back to why 64bit

[vladi]

I still don't quite understand why you don't just run a 32bit operating system.

[daonoir]

it annoy's me to not do things properly and to have to go looking for drivers for this shit I only want to do it once.

32bit fedora is not working and have to find a new distro anyway so why not 64bit.

and in 6 mounths to a year alot of stuff will be 64bit and i dont want to have to change over then.

and i am running a 32 bit os Win xp for games but i dont like useing windows for anything else.

and i want to use a 64bit OS

why have a 64bit processor and not be able to use it?

[slaine1]

I still don't quite understand why you don't just run a 32bit operating system.

The big reason is that going 64 bit gives you a shitload more registers, and it turns out that going 64 bit on any processor will give you around 10% percent improvement on workloads which require those registers. This applies even to the Core 2 Duo processors which disable macro fusion in 64 bit mode. Even if you don't need the 64 bit address space.

That's like going up 1 stepping for free on certain tasks.

[vladi]

The big reason is that going 64 bit gives you a shitload more registers, and it turns out that going 64 bit on any processor will give you around 10% percent improvement on workloads which require those registers. This applies even to the Core 2 Duo processors which disable macro fusion in 64 bit mode. Even if you don't need the 64 bit address space.

That's like going up 1 stepping for free on certain tasks.

I totally agree, but I don't think its worth the extra hassle of drivers and distro complications just for home/desktop use. If you want to run a shared server in which multiple people actually put real workloads on, by all means get a 64bit distro and 16 gigs of ram and knock yourself out. For playing games, watching movies, file sharing and dvd burning, just go 32bit and save yourself the hassle.

[Directed]

No reason to go 64 bit unless you are going to add more than 4 GB or RAM. All it does is create more overhead otherwise.

[ewe2]

daonir there's always the amd_64 ubuntu/kubuntu distros, which are pretty good from what I hear. I'm not going 64bit yet, I'm still not happy with the support for particular chipsets in many of the current 64bit desktop boards, and I don't see the laptop market going 64bit in a big way yet.

In fact the whole hardware market is getting weird, probably because Vista is a lemon on the horizon. The free OS's are the early adopter fringe for the 64bit market, it's not going to be viable for maybe 2 years yet.

[jasebert]

I am using Ubuntu and I find it very clean and easy to use.

[wolfpac181]

I've been rockin ubuntu for a long while now. I've also got gentoo running on a cobalt velociraptor, converted it to an IPtables transparent firewall using rsync and swatch.