Mandrakesoft has released the AMD64 edition of Mandrakelinux 10.0: “Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official for AMD64 combines the strengths of the 10.0 distribution with the latest technology of AMD Athlon64 and AMD Opteron processors. 10.0 Official for AMD64 is based on the PowerPack 10.0 with significant performance enhancements in all of the applications.”
Mandrakelinux 10.0 for AMD64 Released
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From the product page
“Full support for AMD 64-bit architecture which is on average 20% faster than traditional 32-bit systems”
Subtracting hype then it’s propably less then 20% and I thought it would be more. Anyway, the AMD 939 pin 64 bit CPUs have just become available. No motherboards for them yet though. And after that the wait for prices to come down. But it would be nice to try right now.
Mandrakelinux 10.0 AMD64 is probably the first of a select group of full-fledged, up-to-date desktop-oriented 64-bit distributions.
It means both Mandrakelinux and 64-bit AMD64 are here to stay in the Linux software panorama.
Quite an achievement! Congratulations to all the developers and beta-testers (company and volunteers).
What the “average 20% faster” comment in the press-release means is that, when run on an AMD64 box, on average applications run 20% faster when compiled in 64-bit mode compared to the same code compiled in 32-bit mode, running on the same box.
As you know, AMD64 bit systems will run quite well the Mandrakelinux standard 32-bit 10.0 distribution. The fact is, Mandrakesoft developers have taken their latest 32-bit 10.0 distribution and ported it to 64-bit.
BTW, you can get an AMD64 CPU + mobo for as low as $280 nowadays, or around 300 euros in Europe.
The only caveat is that if your kernel is tainted with proprietary 32-bit code, you have to check if the same code is available compiled for AMD64. The NVIDIA drivers are, I think.
I replaced 2 Pentium 4 machines with a single opteron machine. … The load is even lower… very oustanding. I tried running a mandrake linux version but it was far too buggy at first.. I bet it has surely changed now! I had to settle for a redhat 9 distro and run the serve rin 32bit mode.
Winmodem support is generally poor on AMD64 distros probably because the drivers haven’t been ported over yet. Guess I’ll stay with a 32 bit distro for now on my Athlon64 laptop.
Yep, winmodem linux drivers usually include a proprietary binary module compiled by the modem chipset manufacturer for 32-bit x86 CPUs.
This makes these drivers incompatible with any Linux 64-bit kernel.
Since on your laptop I guess the performance aspect is secondary to the communications/portability aspects, sticking with a 32-bit distribution may be a wise choice for the moment. If you absolutely need the extra 20% performance, a solution is to get a PCMCIA card with a true hardware modem.
Does the driver wrapper work for 64-bit Linux yet?
Mandrakelinux 10.0 AMD64 is probably the first of a select group of full-fledged, up-to-date desktop-oriented 64-bit distributions.
Fedora : http://fedora.redhat.com/ (free(dom) and free ($ 0)).
Gentoo is also AMD64 ready.
Mandrakelinux 10.0 Official for AMD64 is available! <strong>2004-05-04</strong> :
http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/press/pr?n=/pr/products/2466&ws…
I thought AMD64 chips could run 32 bit software even when in 64 bit mode? Or vice versa? Or just because the kernel is compiled for 64 bits, the modules/drivers also have to be 64 bit compiled as well?
Yes, but the OS has to support this, in windows its called thunking. So 32-bit windows XP can run 16-bit apps, and 64-bit windows can run 32-bit apps. But I don’t know if linux supports this. Also, most OSs need drivers to be the native bit size.
Flame me if you want, but does any developed country still use Modems? I havent seen one of those thingies since 1997. Even better i _havent heard_ them
. Anyways, if the drivers is available as source, chances are you can compile them as a kernel module or into the kernel. But vendors still useing binary modules with only source bridges, compiled to your kernel, like nvidia, is really annoying. Just open source it already, its not like im gonna build my own gfx chip from it anyways 
.
It is a welcome addition. There others though:
Gentoo has supported it for a LONG time
Red Hat Fedora
SuSE 9.1 for AMD64 shipped a few weeks ago
Those are the ones I know of off hand.
That was for pre-order. It is now available.
Quite a few still using modems actually, at least in the case of embedded systems and devices. The company I work for has to support a lot of these. We also have customers who are fully modernized, moving everything to IP-based devices as fast as possible. Depends entirely on their budget
“Just open source it already, its not like im gonna build my own gfx chip from it anyways
”
Couldn’t agree more!
Most laptops these days come with winmodems. People too poor to jump on the broadband bandwagon still use plain old dial-up. That’s the reason I need Winmodem support. I’m sure there are others who do.
I installed the 64 community on my new computer system. I didn’t use it for long because there were GL issues with a 32-bit game I’d recently become a beta tester for (I expected issues, but had to try anyway
. The short of it is, boot up was probably 20% faster, it was nice. They system felt pretty snappy, but I didn’t keep it long enough to get a feel for much other then the boot-up. I was pretty sad when I wiped the partition and will probably try to install it again soon.
Just $.02
Now that I have it setup on my new dual Opteron 248 systems, it’s just awsome! It’s so damn fast. First the hardware… Tyan k8w mb, dual 248 opetron cpus, 4gb ram,
dual ATA/133s (was going to go SATA but was advised against that), Quadro Fx/1100, Logitech wireless keyboard mouse combo, and a Viewsonic VP191p 19″ LCD monitor, and a Broadcom 1000baseT PCI-X/133 card added on. It was running Suse 9.0amd64, but it just didn’t set off my bells if you know what I mean.
This version didn’t recognize the Quadro/FX 1100 card so I had to install ‘text mode’. No problem, it was similar enough to the graphics installer. Once I had the machine on the network it was time to fetch the Nvidia graphics drivers from downloads.nvidia.com and run the Unified Nvidia installer. The reason for the posting here, is it took me several hours to get this working with the combination of the card, and the viewsonic LCD monitor. So
here are some tips.
First. Install linux-src (urpmi –fuzzy linux-src).
Second. Goto http://www.minion.de and download the patches
there. (do no try to install without these. It’s a waste of time). Follow the instructions from the minion.de website.
Even with these I had a difficult time getting the LCD monitor to work. If I set the Driver “vesa” in XF86Config-4, I could get it to display 1280×1024 pretty easy. Using ‘drakxconf’ I finally hit a display that worked with the nvidia drivers. ‘Viewsonic/VP190’ at
1280×1024 and the driver “nvidia”.
Section “Device”
Driver “nvidia”
Option “IgnoreDisplayDevices” “CRT”
EndSection
I also had some problems where the nvidia installer adds a line to modules.devfs. Remark that out, and place the line “alias /dev/nvidia* nvidia” into modprobe.conf.
After that.. it’s all Mandrake 10.0 Linux 2.6 SMP from there on out.
Have Fun
For those of you who think modems are dead or people are too poor to buy them take another look. For people who just send e-mail and browse a few pages broadband is a waste of money and for many companies who have employees that travel a modem is a must. I have broadband at work and home but when I travel I sometime have no choice but to use a modem.
Its great that the Linux community is putting a lot of effort into 64-bit. Esp. javing just bought a new AMD64 bit system. Personally though I havn’t seen much of a difference in performance between 64bit Linux/64bit Windows and the 32 bit versions.