Thierry de Coulon wrote:
Hello all,
I have been a Linux user for over five years - mostly using SuSE first, then
Debian based distributions, but from time to time "toying" with Gentoo.
Now I'm in the process of building an Opteron based machine and decided it
would be a good idea to build a Gentoo-amd64 distribution.
I've googled quite a bit but I would still like to ask a few questions, such
as:
- are there special points I should pay attention to or can I simply follow
the amd64 install instruction?
- As far as I understand there are still lots of programs that won't compile
in 64 bit. What will happen if I try to emerge such a program?
- it seems most of the multimedia codecs still are 32 bit. Can you use these
on a 64 bit distro?
- other 64 bit distributions (I've downloaded SuSE and Kubuntu) will allready
have dealt with most compatibility problems. Should I learn more about 64 bit
specificities before attempting to build a Gentoo-64 system?
Thanks for any advice.
Thierry
I've been using Gentoo on an amd64 machine for about 2 years now. The amd64
should include the same steps you'd need for the Opteron; just change your
-march setting in the cflags (covered in the manual). Personally, I find that
the selection of applications is fairly even with x86. You can look at what's
available at packages.gentoo.org. I actually used SuSE-64 when it first came
out and was strongly disappointed; been using Gentoo since day two of owning
this machine.
It's always good to know your system, but the entire installation process is
rather painless (minus my experience with Grub which isn't architecture
dependent). You'll want to learn more about the CPU if you plan on developing
for it, but as a user you should be fine. You'll learn a lot simply by using
the environment and reading up when you can or run into problems. Anyway, good
luck with your install whichever distro you decide to use.
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