[GLLUG] which distribution

[Brent Barker]

I have only used Gentoo, so take this as you will. Ubuntu compiled for
AMD will probably work fine. I'm guessing that they are using the same
naming scheme as Gentoo, which means "amd64" was chosen simply because
AMD came out with a 64-bit processor first. Judging by the Ubuntu
site, it says this about the AMD64 architecture: "Choose this to take
full advantage of computers based on the AMD64 or EM64T architecture
(e.g., Athlon64, Opteron, EM64T Xeon)."
(http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/7.10/).

Now, Gentoo compiles everything (well, almost everything) from source
code, so you'll be sure about optimizing your install, especially in
cases where precompiled binaries only come in 32-bit flavors
(Openoffice, Firefox are 2 that I know of). It handles dependencies
very nicely and does all the compiling and installing automatically,
although it lacks some automation in uninstalling packages. Looking at
the "Safe Cflags" for your processor, gentoo-wiki.com recommends the
same chost (compiler host) for both Intel Core 2's and Xeons.
(http://gentoo-wiki.com/Safe_Cflags#Intel_Core_2_Duo.2FQuad_.2F_Xeon_51xx.2F53xx).
Comparing that with the statement from Ubuntu above, it looks like the
Ubuntu distro would be fine for your architecture (with the caveat of
32-bit binaries listed above, which would be run on an emulated 32-bit
environment).

If you do choose to install Gentoo, I recommend following the Gentoo
Installation Handbook, found at
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/index.xml . If you run into
problems, be sure to check out #gentoo on irc.freenode.net . Others
have said that Gentoo's IRC channel and documentation is more helpful
and complete than other distros (I have no experience in this,
however).

Good luck!

--Brent

On Jan 10, 2008 5:06 AM, Keyan Mehravaran <keyanm at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Dear Linux users,
>
> I've been receiving your emails for a few years and have learned a lot.
> I was once an msu engineering student, but now I've graduated and I'm  far
> away.
> Still, I wonder if you could help me with this issue.
>
> I have this hp desktop, with the following processor, and 4 GB memory,
>
> Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU  @ 2.66GHz stepping 07
>
> and I wonder what distribution would take advantage of the 64 bit/Quad
> capabilities of the processor?
> I have the SuSE Enterprise 10, but since I've been very comfortable with
> ubuntu, regarding things like printers,... I am leaning towards that. It seems
> the 64 bit ubuntu is compiled for AMD, in that case, would it still be
> efficient on Intel?
> Please note that although my linux and hardware information are not very
> advanced, I've been using linux for a few years and I'm not afraid to things by
> changing the configuration text files etc. However, I don't want to spend my
> whole day finding the right printer driver, or installing mplayer prerequisites
> one by one.
> I appreciate your support.
>
> Kian Mehravaran
>
>
>
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