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Which 64 bit Linux/unix should I install?

KAMAZON

KAMAZON

Golden Member
Hello I have a AMD 64 3200 with a Radeon x800xt All In Wonder and a D-Link wireless network card which I'll have to find supported drivers for but what 64 bit linux do you guys recommend? I hope to run in Win XP ProVMWare, as well as Wine to run games like World of Warcraft and such. Does this seem reasonable?
 
Running a 64-bit distro will probably make WINE more problematic, although I haven't tried it. ATI has 64-bit drivers for Linux so that shouldn't be a problem, but do you know what chipset the wifi card uses?
 
I haven't had 64-bit related problems with wine and VMware runs fine under 64-bit. Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake AMD64 is a very good distro IMO. SUSE 10.1 looks cleaner from the beginning, but when you actually need to do stuff, nine times out of ten it's easier to do in Ubuntu (mainly because of the easy-to-use repositories). Yeah, SUSE has repositories too, but "Software Install" simply stopped functioning after a while for me, and apparently there was some big problem with the zenworks daemon for package management. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, nor do I really care, because Ubuntu is suiting my needs perfectly fine at the moment. It seems easier to get used to.

If you run VMware, I recommend using the xfs file system for whatever partition you're putting the Virtual Machine (VM) on. I used reiserfs prior to trying xfs and my files got really fragmented, and the VM performed very poorly. The VM was in somewhere near ~4500 different fragments total, and with xfs it's only been in 9 and 5 after defragmentation. And if you get the xfsdump (Ubuntu) package, you can defragment it with xfs_fsr. More details on my experience with that: http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview...&STARTPAGE=1&FTVAR_FORUMVIEWTMP=Linear I just thought I'd mention that because it made a world of difference.

You might as well just make everything xfs. I made my home directory xfs and it's been running just as well if not better than reiserfs.

Cedega TransGaming has official support for World of Warcraft.
 
Originally posted by: KAMAZON
Thanx, this is the wireless card I believe.
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=0&pid=308

Although it seems the linux drivers are readily available here:
http://support.dlink.com/faq/view.asp?prod_id=357
Click to expand...

You're chipset is either made by Atheros or Ralink. Either way, its should be supported in linux automatically without having to install any drivers yourself.

Like Nothinman said, running wine in a 64 bit system might be problematic, but I haven't done it myself.

Try looking at a 64 bit version of Ubuntu or its derivatives (Kubuntu/Xubuntu).
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
You might as well just make everything xfs.
Click to expand...

If you do that you need to create a seperate /boot, I'd suggest no larger than 100M ext2.
Click to expand...

Thanks everyone for all the information, I'm excited to do this. What do 'create a seperate /boot mean' and also you all suggest I make my partitions XFS? Are 2 Partitions enough?
 
Originally posted by: KAMAZON
Originally posted by: Nothinman
You might as well just make everything xfs.
Click to expand...

If you do that you need to create a seperate /boot, I'd suggest no larger than 100M ext2.
Click to expand...

Thanks everyone for all the information, I'm excited to do this. What do 'create a seperate /boot mean' and also you all suggest I make my partitions XFS? Are 2 Partitions enough?
Click to expand...

A seperate /boot means a partition named /boot. XFS is a filesystem. It's a good filesystem, but it's less tested in Linux than others. I personally use and recommend ext3fs because it's so well tested and widely used.

At a minimum you will want a / (root) and a swap partition.
 
Thanks, so 100MB /Boot partition, a big /Root drive acting as my storage area, and a swap partition roughly the same amt as my ram (1gb). Sound good guys?
 
The root would just be called / actually. That is what you enter for mount point.

I haven't tried ext3 fs for running VMware so I have no clue how it would perform. Maybe you should use the more standard ext3 and then if you encounter performance problems with VMware, switch to xfs.

I think this would be the best setup. ext2 for boot because it's very compatible with everything.

Label/mount point, size, fs
/boot, 100M, ext2
swap, 1G, swap
/, __G, ext3

Make / the remainder of your hard drive, or however much you are willing to allocate for Linux.
 
It's a good filesystem, but it's less tested in Linux than others.
Click to expand...

This is hardly true, it's been in use by SGI for decades and it's been available on Linux for over 5 years.

Are 2 Partitions enough?
Click to expand...

Not really. You'll want at least / /boot and swap. I usually put /home on a seperate partition as well but that's for workstations, if you don't plan on really putting anything in /home you can skip that.

Thanks, so 100MB /Boot partition, a big /Root drive acting as my storage area, and a swap partition roughly the same amt as my ram (1gb). Sound good guys?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't put my data on /. Filling up / won't cause a kernel panic or anything but it'll cause odd problems. You should create a seperate partition for your data and mount it wherever you like.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
It's a good filesystem, but it's less tested in Linux than others.
Click to expand...

This is hardly true, it's been in use by SGI for decades and it's been available on Linux for over 5 years.
Click to expand...

It doesn't matter how long it's been used in Irix. And it's less tested than ext[23]fs.
 
It doesn't matter how long it's been used in Irix. And it's less tested than ext[23]fs.
Click to expand...

Sure it does, the code base, at least in the initial port, was the same but with some Linux compatibility code. They were maintaining both in the same tree for a while, obviously that's not true now that XFS has been merged into the Linux kernel but the core code is still largely the same.
 
Too many good replies to thank everyone indiviually so thanks everyone. I am enjoying the discussion and learning a lot. I'll update this with my results over the weekend when I have the time to actually do this.


I hope I don't mess up my Acronis secure zone so just in case I'm saving a image of my win config to another pc ^.^
 
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