Re: [tlug] New Custom Server for Linux - Advice Needed

[Joe Larabell <fred62@???>]

On Fri, 18 Aug 2006, Attila Kinali wrote:

> If you go for an amd64, then you have to live with a few
> limitations of software that doesnt work correctly on that
> system yet. It's better for sparc bassed systems where most
> programs do work. But on amd64 you can always build a 32bit
> chroot and run the other programms too.

Maybe "doesn't work correctly" is a bit strong these days?

I have been running an AMD64 system with Gentoo for over a year now and
have yet to run into anything that simply "doesn't work". Sure, sometimes
the s/w I want isn't marked as stable in the Gentoo database and I if I
want it badly enough, I have to tell the installer to go ahead and install
it anyway -- but I can't recall even the untested packages giving me any
real problems. And I did compile everything in 64-bit mode. And I even had
to install some 32-bit binary drivers for something way back when (don't
recall exactly what -- probably video) and even that worked.

My company also has customers running simulation s/w on AMD64 machines in
production mode and we have not heard any complaints (AMD, in fact, is a
huge customer of ours and runs an enormous simulation farm for verifying
their processor chips -- obviously using AMD64s).

Perhaps there are simply some distros that don't do 64-bit well. But there
is nothing inherrently broken with Linux running on AMD64 machines, as far
as I can tell. And the thing is blazingly fast...

---
Joseph L (Joe) Larabell            Never fight with a dragon
http://larabell.org                     for thou art crunchy
                                  and goest well with cheese.