I've only just tried out a 64-bit linux. Mepis in my case. Basically kubuntu with a number of scripts and auto-detects to make sure everything "just works". 6 months back many people in my old LUG were having trouble with 64 bit installs. A lot of the problems seem to have been well ironed out. Including CPU stepping.
<br><br>SimplyMepis64 was the easiest install/config I've ever been though. It's rather limited in the install setup (you can only set swap, root, and /home partitions in the GUI). But if you want more than that you probably know what you're doing anyway.
<br><br>Mepis detected my wireless card, and has an opt in in the grub menu for the nVidia drivers. Beryl in 3d was up in running on my laptop off the live CD and was installed that way and running on the first boot. I did change the wireless from manual to automatic in the mepis network util.
<br><br>So far the only real issue I've had is getting suspend/hibernate to work (which is more to do with the laptop hardware than the distro).<br><br>-Brandon<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 7/27/07, <b class="gmail_sendername">
Daniel A. Ramaley</b> <<a href="mailto:daniel.ramaley@drake.edu">daniel.ramaley@drake.edu</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
I posted over a year ago[1] a question about graphics accelerators<br>because i was contemplating building a new machine. Well, my main<br>machine is 9 years old this month and i finally decided it was time to<br>build a new one; the parts should arrive next week. It will have an AMD
<br>Athlon 64 X2 CPU. My question is, what difficulties should i<br>realistically expect to encounter if i install a 64-bit distribution? I<br>will most likely put Debian on the machine, though i'm still debating<br>between stable and testing (just upgraded my old machine last night to
<br>testing so i can play with it for a few days first).<br><br>As for the graphics card i asked about earlier, i did go with nVidia.<br>I'd really prefer open source drivers; i've enjoyed Linux' usual<br>stability on my MacBook which has Intel graphics. But the consensus
<br>seemed to be that though nVidia is closed, at least they keep the<br>drivers updated. So i found one fairly new but slow enough to not need<br>a fan that is listed as Linux compatible and ordered it. I am a bit<br>concerned that i'll have to replace it at some point though; i hope
<br>this machine to last as long as my last one did and even if nVidia does<br>a good job of maintaining their drivers, i would be rather surprised if<br>they continued to maintain support for 8 or 9 years. Hopefully by then
<br>either ATI and/or nVidia will have come to their senses with regards to<br>open source, Intel will have released standalone graphics cards, or the<br>Open Graphics Project[2] will have something on the market.<br><br>
[1] <a href="http://www.cialug.org/pipermail/cialug/2006-May/005666.html">http://www.cialug.org/pipermail/cialug/2006-May/005666.html</a><br>[2] <a href="http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php">http://wiki.opengraphics.org/tiki-index.php
</a><br><br>------------------------------------------------------------------------<br>Dan Ramaley Dial Center 118, Drake University<br>Network Programmer/Analyst 2407 Carpenter Ave
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http://cialug.org/mailman/listinfo/cialug</a><br></blockquote></div><br>