[CS-FSLUG] What am I bid...?

[Dommy E. Hamid]

Ed,

You are very lucky that you get that kind of hardware for free. I have 
to pay quite a lot to get that kind of hardware (at least in terms of 
Indonesian currency anyway).

My experience in 64 bit distro is quite limited frankly, but right now, 
I am using FC4 x86_64 edition for my home desktop (an Athlon 64 3000+). 
In my experience, you will lose very little by using regular 32 bit 
distro. The difference between FC4 x86_64 and Mandriva 2005 LE 32 bit in 
the same hardware is almost negligible. Yes, it feel a little bit 
snappier in FC4, but I have to pay for that performance by downloading 
and reconfiguring things that I took for granted in Mandriva like ntfs 
support, mp3 support, and others. For someone with no broadband like me, 
that's quite a bit of a pain.

Now, it doesn't mean that there is no performance increase. Given the 
right applications and hardware (lots of memory), a 64 bit distro can 
improve performance by up to about 30%. There is a review about linux 
database shootout between Xeon and Opteron in Anandtech a while back. 
Moving to 64 bit increase the performance in the Opteron by 30% while in 
Xeon actually loses performance by about 10%

http://www.anandtech.com/IT/showdoc.aspx?i=2447&p=5

Now, if you prefer Suse, I heard that the downloadable DVD ISO for Suse 
9.3 was out a couple of days back. That DVD supposedly includes both 32 
bit and 64 bit version. 4.2 gigs may be hard to take on a person with no 
broadband, but I am sure you can get it from somewhere like cheapbytes. 
Mandriva 2005 LE 64 bit DVD edition can be bought for about 10 dollars 
plus shipping and handling, so that could be a good route for you.

Good luck,

Dommy


Ed Hurst wrote:
> God can be pretty sneaky at times.
> 
> Today I learned an unnamed donor is winding down operations on some
> hardware in a week or three, and will offer me a system with:
> 
>  - Athlon 64 2.5Ghz
>  - Nvidia 5200 (?)
>  - SATA (but no drives)
>  - At least .5GB RAM
> 
> Does anyone have a distro at hand for 64-bit? If it's something like
> Gentoo where I have to download 75% of the system, forget it. Broadband
> is still in the distant future.
> 
> My favorite SUSE only comes in a DVD ISO, so that's asking a lot for
> someone to download and burn, but I'd prefer that.
> 
> I know nothing about the peculiarities of 64-bit, so I couple links, or
> a short summary would also be nice. Help!
> 

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