Linux for 64bit processors

**Nexor** · December 18th, 2006, 02:25 PM

Being new to linux I don't really know the relative merits of one distribution over another!

Which linux distribution for 64 bit processors would you recommend?

Thanks

**ShuckyD** · December 18th, 2006, 02:37 PM

there are lots.. do you plan on just playing around with linux? BTW Welcome to TechIMO!

What are your system specs and what do you plan on doing? dual-booting?

Linux Distrobutions that include both 32bit and 64bit architectures are:

SuSe
Fedora
Mandriva
Ubuntu

what you might want to do is check out www.distrowatch.com and search by architechtures or by popularity, because there are many linux distros out there that are very "ugly" because they arent a mainstream distro

**CMonster** · December 18th, 2006, 03:08 PM

64bit Desktop: Not all applications are coded for 64bit and as a result some programs are not available and other simple things like java or flash plugins may crash your Internet browser. I've tested SuSE and Mandriva on Athlon 64 and Pentium D, SuSE definately did the better job, I think because of the inclusion of both 32 and 64 bit libs

**GameManK** · December 18th, 2006, 03:26 PM

If you need flash or wine* I would recommend sticking to 32-bit. Otherwise the mentioned distributions are all good. There are also some designed specifically for 64-bit.

*wine is a program that lets you run some windows programs on linux. If you're just starting out and playing around, you probably shouldn't mess with it. Try out all the linux programs first.

**CMonster** · December 20th, 2006, 05:07 PM

The way SuSE sets up a 64 bit system allows you to run the 32bit versions of programs inside the 64bit environment, I haven't tested this in SuSE 10.2 yet, but in previous iterations it was no problem to install the 32bit Firefox, Sun Java, and Flash, for example, and run them separately from the default applications.

**pbharris** · January 24th, 2007, 12:39 AM

i have received nothing but love from fedora.

**Tux007** · February 17th, 2007, 07:50 PM

SUSE
http://en.opensuse.org/Welcome_to_openSUSE.org

Fedora
http://fedora.redhat.com/

Gentoo
http://www.gentoo.org/

Kanotix
http://kanotix.com/

Kubuntu
www.Kubuntu.org

Knoppix64
http://www.applia.fr/contents/knoppix64.html

Ubuntu
www.ubuntu.com

Gnoppix
http://www.nongnu.org/gnoppix/

cheers

Jake

**KarmaKiller** · February 18th, 2007, 02:39 AM

I have used debian amd 64 and it supports alot of 32 bit apps. With synaptic the package manager you can ammend keywords easily. Also, wine-cedega worked fine, so i wouldn't be worried about that.
I'm currently running gentoo 2.6.18-r6 (amd64) and i'm not having any problems with support. I will say there are alot more packages that run i386, but still got the easy ammend keywords in porthole.