Linux/Unix OS options for 64bit

[GhettoPeanut]

Going to make a full switch to a Linux/Unix based OS (mac not an option) at home. was wondering what people out there use and why. i have a fairly stable understanding of Red Hat aka Fedora Core, but this is mainly a server side understanding with no GUI, wasn't sure if fedorea core makes for good home useage. Stuff like MP3's, video, p2p, typical home user endevers is what i'll be doing.

i've got a 64bit amd 939 cpu sli 16x pci express video bla bla
i think i read that SuSE has a 64 bit, dont know to much about it

cliffs:

whats your favorite 64bit linux/unix based os for home and why.

 

[drag]

I use Debian Sid and STable for whenever I can... So Debian is my favorite OS. Debian Stable if you want something that 'just works', Debian Sid if you want newer features first and don't mind big updates and occasional broken this or that. Debian Testing is inbetween the two and is popular.

I use x86 and PPC versions.. they also have a port of AMD64. They do a good job of making their software universal irrespective of the platform you choose. Debian is legally restricted on what sort of software they can support however.. Libdvdcss for cracking dvd encryption, mp3 audio, window media formats, quicktime formats, and other type of things have legal restrictions. You have to use 3rd party repositories to obtain support for these things, but that is the biggest issue.

They are very nice and very similar. For instance I just have to make sure I have the same software installed on my ibook and my AMD desktop and I just rsync to keep my home directory and all my preferences in sync between the laptop and desktop. When I get finished with my laptop I just rsync my /home directory to my desktop, and when I log of my desktop I rsync to my laptop. For the most part it works out.. I just have update-menus run as a start up program in my session preferences.

With AMD64 you are going to be limited on the type of closed source software however, since nobody can port that crap. Stuff like Flash and other things will not have Linux AMD64 versions. For those things you have to run 32bit versions of whatever apps that need to use them.. For instance you'll need 32bit libraries for Doom3, or 32bit version of VLC to deal with the 32bit win32 codecs.

It's not difficult to deal with those things, but it is extra work you have to go through. Which is ontop the normal aclimation proccess that can be somewhat painfull for Debian.

This page is usefull.
http://www.togaware.com/linux/survivor/

If that is to much, then check out Ubuntu. I don't think it is as nice as Debian, but it's easier to deal with initially... They have usefull defaults and UI tweaks that Debian is going to lack at install time.

 

[Nothinman]

If you want to run anything 32-bit you should just go with a 32-bit OS for now, running 32-bit apps in a 64-bit system is still a PITA and you'll have to fight with chroot environments or scripts that adjust the linker environment for 32-bit processes.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
If you want to run anything 32-bit you should just go with a 32-bit OS for now, running 32-bit apps in a 64-bit system is still a PITA and you'll have to fight with chroot environments or scripts that adjust the linker environment for 32-bit processes.

We're running 64 bit SuSe 9.something on our new opteron nodes at work. Have had minimal problems running 32 bit apps - it's now a mixed architecture cluster and the stuff I've built on the 32 bit machines just works on the 64 bit nodes. In fact, my seat-of-the pants feel right now is that the 32 bit version of my main project is marginally faster thent he 64 bit version. Haven't mucked around with the 64 bit optimization to much yet though.

The only trouble I've had was building xxdiff - it didn't find the 64 bit libraries for Qt and some X stuff, but that was easily remedied. A few code changes where I was comparing an unsigned to string::npos, which is long unsigned on X86-64/gcc

 

[GhettoPeanut]

so i should possibly hold of on the 64bit OS cuz 32bit apps dont port that well? you also mentioned SuSE 9.something, possibly 10 has fixed some of these problems.

i'll have to go read some reviews, see if the 64bit SuSE is slower then the 32bit. if so, no biggie, i'll just go install mandrake or something.

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: GhettoPeanut
so i should possibly hold of on the 64bit OS cuz 32bit apps dont port that well? you also mentioned SuSE 9.something, possibly 10 has fixed some of these problems.

All the applications are going to be 64bit unless they are closed source. For most open source software porting to new platforms isn't usually a big deal.. they generally depend on the GNU toolchain to get compiled and once that is ported then thats most of the work.. AMD worked with Suse back in the day to get a Linux port with supporting applications working on Opteron proccessors before AMD released it.

It gave them something to test on and gave them a immediate market (server stuff on Linux) to sell the chips to.

Closed source stuff is another matter. They have their own weird world that is seperate from most Linux stuff...

Stuff like Windows-only codecs, games, flash plugins, closed source drivers (the minority of drivers are closed source.. for video there is ATI and Nvidia.. ati drivers aren't that hot and nvidia had AMD64 drivers since before Opterons were released to public) are going to be the sticking points.

Everything else will work just as well as they do on regular x86.

i'll have to go read some reviews, see if the 64bit SuSE is slower then the 32bit. if so, no biggie, i'll just go install mandrake or something.

Doubt it. Anandtech has some 64bit comparisions on Linux vs 32bit on Linux. Generally they show a improvement if anything.

If your going to try anything try Ubuntu.

 

[Nothinman]

We're running 64 bit SuSe 9.something on our new opteron nodes at work. Have had minimal problems running 32 bit apps - it's now a mixed architecture cluster and the stuff I've built on the 32 bit machines just works on the 64 bit nodes. In fact, my seat-of-the pants feel right now is that the 32 bit version of my main project is marginally faster thent he 64 bit version. Haven't mucked around with the 64 bit optimization to much yet though.

If that's true I tip my hat to SuSe for making the transition work well in the short-term, but in the long-term there will most likely be a different standard adopted by the FHS people so SuSe will probably end up redoing all of their biarch support in the future.

so i should possibly hold of on the 64bit OS cuz 32bit apps dont port that well?

They port fine, it's just the closed source apps like flash and games haven't been ported.

 

[GhettoPeanut]

Ok, if its just closed source and games, i dont care, i'm making the switch to Unix Linux os because of my gamming addiction thats beginning to interfear with my life, need to quite because its becomming a problem. dont care what anyone says, you can be addicted to games. if you dont think so, dont play for a year. if you can't do it, then yes, you are addicted. the "i dont quite cuz i dont want to" is the biggest load of crap. its the same thing's druggies say. not to start a flame war, this is just causing allot of problems for me cuz i dont want to quite playing, but i know i have to, no self control to just play an hour or two a day. oh well.

sorry, touchy subject for me.

anyway, yeah, closed source and games, no biggie since i'm a big open source fan.

i'll look into Ubuntu
just found this right off the bat.
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/topic-55232.html

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: GhettoPeanut
Ok, if its just closed source and games, i dont care, i'm making the switch to Unix Linux os because of my gamming addiction thats beginning to interfear with my life, need to quite because its becomming a problem. dont care what anyone says, you can be addicted to games. if you dont think so, dont play for a year. if you can't do it, then yes, you are addicted. the "i dont quite cuz i dont want to" is the biggest load of crap. its the same thing's druggies say. not to start a flame war, this is just causing allot of problems for me cuz i dont want to quite playing, but i know i have to, no self control to just play an hour or two a day. oh well.

I feel the same way...I used to want to play Wolfenstein: ET so bad. Now I know what it must feel like to try and quit smoking (I don't smoke). I like BF2 too, but the noobs mostly turned me off from playing for a while.

Anyway...I've had good luck with OpenSUSE 10 64-bit.

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

We're running 64 bit SuSe 9.something on our new opteron nodes at work. Have had minimal problems running 32 bit apps - it's now a mixed architecture cluster and the stuff I've built on the 32 bit machines just works on the 64 bit nodes. In fact, my seat-of-the pants feel right now is that the 32 bit version of my main project is marginally faster thent he 64 bit version. Haven't mucked around with the 64 bit optimization to much yet though.

If that's true I tip my hat to SuSe for making the transition work well in the short-term, but in the long-term there will most likely be a different standard adopted by the FHS people so SuSe will probably end up redoing all of their biarch support in the future.

Who is FHS?

Anyway - the app in question is cluster app written in C++ with a bit of fortran. Uses PVM for the comm, links in the mysql libs. Slid the new nodes into the rack, got PVM working (trivial) and NFS mounted. Ran it, and it "just worked" - loaded the exe built on the 32 bit xeon server over the NFS link. No shared library issues at all. I was impressed as well.

The biggest PITA was moving the mysql database over from a 32 bit machine to a 64. Can't just shut down the server and copy the binary data files over as you can between two 32 bit machines. Had to do a mysqldump, which took forever and a day. But we probably would have had to do that anyway going from 3.23 to 4.1

so i should possibly hold of on the 64bit OS cuz 32bit apps dont port that well?

They port fine, it's just the closed source apps like flash and games haven't been ported.

 

[Nothinman]

Who is FHS?

The Filesystem Hiearchy Standard. A quick google for Linux FHS would have answered that.

Anyway - the app in question is cluster app written in C++ with a bit of fortran. Uses PVM for the comm, links in the mysql libs. Slid the new nodes into the rack, got PVM working (trivial) and NFS mounted. Ran it, and it "just worked" - loaded the exe built on the 32 bit xeon server over the NFS link. No shared library issues at all. I was impressed as well.

Are you sure you're not using a 32-bit userland with a 64-bit kernel?

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

Who is FHS?

The Filesystem Hiearchy Standard. A quick google for Linux FHS would have answered that.

I'm sure it would have, but I was replying anyway.
shrug - it was an opportunity to come off as magnanimous and knowledgable. You chose irritable. Whatever works

Anyway - the app in question is cluster app written in C++ with a bit of fortran. Uses PVM for the comm, links in the mysql libs. Slid the new nodes into the rack, got PVM working (trivial) and NFS mounted. Ran it, and it "just worked" - loaded the exe built on the 32 bit xeon server over the NFS link. No shared library issues at all. I was impressed as well.

Are you sure you're not using a 32-bit userland with a 64-bit kernel?

uname -ra
Linux neuromancer 2.6.11.4-21.9-smp #1 SMP Fri Aug 19 11:58:59 UTC 2005 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

file /bin/bash
/bin/bash: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

file /usr/bin/nm
/usr/bin/nm: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

file /usr/bin/g++
/usr/bin/g++: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

file /usr/bin/ld
/usr/bin/ld: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

file /bin/grep
/bin/grep: ELF 64-bit LSB executable, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), for GNU/Linux 2.4.1, dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped

file /lib64/libm.so.6
/lib64/libm.so.6: ELF 64-bit LSB shared object, AMD x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

file /lib/libm.so.6
/lib/libm.so.6: ELF 32-bit LSB shared object, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped

 

[Armitage]

One problem I'm running into at the moment though - no 32bit mysql-devel package, so I can't build the 32 bit version of my code.

 

[The Linuxator]

Linux distros are all the same, your chocie of distro, will affect just how much support will you really get & package avilability.
I use Fedora Core 4 64-bit on my AMD Rig, hadn't had a single problem with it, I have the same installation running now since FC4-x86-64 was released, I have since Installed the media apps that I need , FC4 has been the perfect substitute for win xp pro on all my sytems, and I love Mplayer and it's capability to play every form of media out there (almost), I use Mplayer to record streaming radio at 192 kbps!, Mplayer also serves as a substitute for RealPlayer, Windows media player and Quicktime and yes that covers streaming media in firefox through the Mplayer plugin !! As for listening to music I like using a light player for the job, such as Beep (A Gtk port of xmms, more stable than xmms on Fedora Core 4 IMO).

I have to admit Fedora Core is a volatile distro, there are alot of good things and some bad things to be said about Fedora Core, from my humble point of view :

Pros:

-Offers the latest apps.
-Excellent community support + Partial RedHat support (some of the coders that work on Fedora Core are actually Red Hat employees).
-Stable.
-Extremely easy to install.
-I haven't really experienced a bug in it (yet).
-Runs on all major architectures out there.
-Gets a nice update cycle.
-Very user friendly.
-No matter what they tell you about it, the RPM format is very widespread, which gives you direct acess to dirvers from many manfacturers out there (Intel for example), so you will have an easier time getting your device installed properly in Fedora Core 4 (without dpending on an App Istaller or repo) , another example would be, I needed Adobe Reader for my FC system, I headed to Adobe.com, and chose Linux as an OS, and voila they offered me either to download the source code, or an rpm, clicked on rpm and get everything working properly.

Cons :

-The major Con for the 64-bit version of Fedora Core 4, is that the flash plugin for X86-64 isn't avilable as I last recall.
-You might get a taste of RPM HELL every now and then :evil: but that is becoming more rare as updates keep coming and the Fedora Core package manager / Installer gets some updates in there.

I would recommend that you give FC4 a shot, especially with that former redhat experience, which could come in handy some day , but then again it's your choice, as long as you are using Linux you know it;s going to be good