Linux for AMD64

[Don McCarter]

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

Thanks, Don

 

[General Schvantzkoph]

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

Thanks, Don

Both SUSE and Mandrake have 64 bit versions. The 64 bit version of
Mandrake 10 is in beta, 9.2 is out.

 

[Povl H. Pedersen]

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

SUSE has and AMD64, and Mandrake 10 is in public beta / release candidate
state.

 

[Barry Walsh]

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

Thanks, Don

There's also Fedora and Gentoo. Mandrake 64bit Official is out of beta,
but only available to buy at the moment, no downloads yet.

 

[goblin]

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

Thanks, Don

Mandrake 10 x86_64 RC1 works great for me on an A64 3200+ GA-K8TV800. I
haven't tried other distros but I did have plenty of problems with the
Beta-1 of Mandrake 10 x86_64. RC1 is much better, almost no problems.

The only major problem I have with it is it can't read the NTFS
formatted Raid-0 SATA drives. It's not the raid-0 nor the SATA that it
chokes on, but the combination of it being ntfs and bios raid (as
opposed to simple OS striping). I have installed mdk64 (bootable) on the
SATA raid-0 themselves in the past so I'm certain the problem involves
NTFS here. Linux sees it as 2 empty drives instead of one NTFS formatted
drive. My config is:

ide0 = XP Pro 64 [80GB] NTFS
ide1 = XP Pro 32 [80GB] NTFS
ide2 = Mandrake 64 [120GB] ext3
sata0+1 = 240GB [2-120GB with raid-0) NTFS



Linux can be tricky to setup if you have both IDE and SATA hard drives,
and several operating systems. I don't suggest booting any OS from SATA
when you're running both IDE and SATA. It can be done but I've found
errors on the sata drives under that configuration so I'd stay away
booting SATA if you also have IDE running.


One thing I've noticed about mdk64: If you change the amount of ram in
your box after mdk is installed, it won't run correctly anymore. That
problem doesn't occur with XP64.

 

[K]

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

Lots of happy customers in the Gentoo forums. The downside of Gentoo is
the compile times but with any AMD64 CPU it will fly.

K

 

[_]

...
Linux can be tricky to setup if you have both IDE and SATA hard drives,
and several operating systems. I don't suggest booting any OS from SATA
when you're running both IDE and SATA. It can be done but I've found
errors on the sata drives under that configuration so I'd stay away
booting SATA if you also have IDE running.
...

From what I've heard, you'd be better off staying away from SATA
entirely. Another Intel technological disaster.

 

[Andy Yee]

Hmmm...can you cite sources please?

Personally though, I'd wait and ensure that SATA is implemented directly

From what I've heard, you'd be better off staying away from SATA
entirely. Another Intel technological disaster.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andy Yee E-Mail: ayee AT mn dot rr dot com
President Home Page: http://home.mn.rr.com/andyyee
New Directions Engineering, Inc.

Godwin's Law: As a USENET thread grows, the probability of a reference
to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1.00.
Corollary: When such a reference is made, it is generally
recognized that the poster has LOST the argument.

 

[K]

Hmmm...can you cite sources please?

Personally though, I'd wait and ensure that SATA is implemented directly
on a chipset, and NOT going through the PCI bus.

It's just arrived, the Nforce 3 250 has integrated SATA.

I don't find PCI SATA that much of a problem anyway, my NF2 box has no PCI
cards installed and you'd find it hard to transfer 133MB/s.

K

 

[_]

Various current threads over in blahblahblah.storage newsgroup. Yes
many issues hotly debated, but one thing remains the same: never be a
first adapter.

 

[Povl H. Pedersen]

It's just arrived, the Nforce 3 250 has integrated SATA.

I don't find PCI SATA that much of a problem anyway, my NF2 box has no PCI
cards installed and you'd find it hard to transfer 133MB/s.

What ? I am running a 2 disk SATA stripe set, and I am doing
110-115 Mbyte/s sustained transfer. What you are saying is, that
if I add a plain UDMA 133 disk, then my speed will max out
at 133MByte/s ?

Oh well - ATA has always sucked big time.

 

[Don McCarter]

Thanks for the info.
I installed Mandrake 10 AMD64 RC1 today.
For some reason the 2.6 kernel lunix doesn't like
my machine. The advanced options in Mandrake 10
allowed me to use kernel 2.4..

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

Thanks, Don

Mandrake 10 x86_64 RC1 works great for me on an A64 3200+ GA-K8TV800. I
haven't tried other distros but I did have plenty of problems with the
Beta-1 of Mandrake 10 x86_64. RC1 is much better, almost no problems.

The only major problem I have with it is it can't read the NTFS
formatted Raid-0 SATA drives. It's not the raid-0 nor the SATA that it
chokes on, but the combination of it being ntfs and bios raid (as
opposed to simple OS striping). I have installed mdk64 (bootable) on the
SATA raid-0 themselves in the past so I'm certain the problem involves
NTFS here. Linux sees it as 2 empty drives instead of one NTFS formatted
drive. My config is:

ide0 = XP Pro 64 [80GB] NTFS
ide1 = XP Pro 32 [80GB] NTFS
ide2 = Mandrake 64 [120GB] ext3
sata0+1 = 240GB [2-120GB with raid-0) NTFS



Linux can be tricky to setup if you have both IDE and SATA hard drives,
and several operating systems. I don't suggest booting any OS from SATA
when you're running both IDE and SATA. It can be done but I've found
errors on the sata drives under that configuration so I'd stay away
booting SATA if you also have IDE running.


One thing I've noticed about mdk64: If you change the amount of ram in
your box after mdk is installed, it won't run correctly anymore. That
problem doesn't occur with XP64.

 

[Olivier Brisson]

Does anyone know of a 64bit version of Linux
that works with the AMD64 CPU?

Thanks, Don

Hello Don,

There is not only Linux, but a lot of other free Unix out there:
FreeBSD: http://www.freebsd.org
NetBSD : http://www.netbsd.org
OpenBSD: http://www.openbsd.org

Cheers,

Olivier
--

 

[Don McCarter]

Thanks for the reply,
I have tried several Linux distro's, many of them
don't work well with my ATI 9600 Pro video card.
So I was trying to find a 64bit version for the AMD64
CPU that likes my MB & Video card, grin.
So far the Mandrake 10 AMD64 RC1 works best.
There appear to be several distro's available for the AMD64
if one buys them. I like the try before you buy approach.
I now have the option of booting to WinXP pro, WinXP64
or Mandrake 10.
Some of the Linux versions are complicated and
I don't have the knowledge to install them.

 

[K]

What ? I am running a 2 disk SATA stripe set, and I am doing
110-115 Mbyte/s sustained transfer. What you are saying is, that
if I add a plain UDMA 133 disk, then my speed will max out
at 133MByte/s ?

Oh well - ATA has always sucked big time.

I don't quite understand you. Most PATA controllers are integrated into
the southbridge on your motherboard and have nothing to do with PCI. It
would make no difference to your SATA throughput if you added another
regular PATA drive.

your SATA setup already takes up 115MB/s from the maximum of 133MB/s the
PCI bus can carry. Add some extra cards such as Gb ethernet, PCI video etc
and you could well end up saturating the PCI bus.


K

 

[Ian Hastie]

I don't quite understand you. Most PATA controllers are integrated into
the southbridge on your motherboard and have nothing to do with PCI.

I can't be entirely sure, but I think you'll find the integrated
controller is on the PCI bus. It may not be a physically seperate piece
of hardware, but that doesn't mean much. It would be fairly easy to put
it on the PCI bus internally to the chip. It may not be proof, but why
do you think they show up on lcpsi? For example...

0000:00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA
RAID Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc.
VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE
(rev 06)

Note also the south bridge integrated SATA controller.

It
would make no difference to your SATA throughput if you added another
regular PATA drive.

your SATA setup already takes up 115MB/s from the maximum of 133MB/s the
PCI bus can carry. Add some extra cards such as Gb ethernet, PCI video etc
and you could well end up saturating the PCI bus.

Wouldn't it be nice to have all those extra components on a native hyper
transport bus?! Especially with VIA K8T800 Pro taking that to 1GHz.

 

[Wes Newell]

I can't be entirely sure, but I think you'll find the integrated
controller is on the PCI bus.

You are correct.

[wes@wes2 wes]$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS 755 Host Bridge (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 85C503/5513 (rev 25)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 90)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV20 [GeForce3] (rev a3)
[wes@wes2 wes]$

 

[K]

I can't be entirely sure, but I think you'll find the integrated
controller is on the PCI bus.

You are correct.

[wes@wes2 wes]$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS 755 Host
Bridge (rev 01) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]
SG86C202 00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]
85C503/5513 (rev 25) 00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems
[SiS] 5513 [IDE] 00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated
Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0) 00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon
Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f) 00:03.1 USB
Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0
Controller 00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]
SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 90) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro
Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices
[AMD] K8 NorthBridge 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
K8 NorthBridge 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8
NorthBridge 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV20
[GeForce3] (rev a3)

None of those devices use the PCI bus, despite them being PCI devices
themselves. In a well designed system the only devices that make use of
the bus should be the ones that physically use the PCI slots.

K

 

[Hellraiser]

[wes@wes2 wes]$ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS 755 Host
Bridge (rev 01) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]
SG86C202 00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]
85C503/5513 (rev 25) 00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems
[SiS] 5513 [IDE] 00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated
Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0) 00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon
Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f) 00:03.1 USB
Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0
Controller 00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]
SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 90) 00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro
Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge 00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices
[AMD] K8 NorthBridge 00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD]
K8 NorthBridge 00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8
NorthBridge 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV20
[GeForce3] (rev a3)

None of those devices use the PCI bus, despite them being PCI devices
themselves. In a well designed system the only devices that make use of
the bus should be the ones that physically use the PCI slots.

So, do tell, what bus do they use? ISA perhaps? Of course they use the PCI
bus, how do you suppose all those integrated LANs, sound, video, etc
communicate with everything else?

Sheesh.

Hellraiser..........>

 

[Hellraiser]

Define 'integrated'. Integrated can mean that that devices are on separate
chips on the motherboard, or can mean they have all been placed on one
chip, usually the southbridge.

They don't need to use any bus if they're all integrated on to the
southbridge. The southbridge then communicates with the northbridge with a
proprietry interconnect (MuTIOL for SiS chipsets, Hypertransport for VIA,
V-Link for VIA). However if any of these devices are on their own chip
such as a SATA chip, then they have to make use of the PCI bus

OK, explain to me how without a PCI lock, I experience hard disk corruption
on an older VIA board which allegedly has its IDE controller as part of the
Southbridge, when I increase the FSB? As this apparently doesn't use the PCI
bus, there is surely no reason for it to do this is there?

Hellraiser..........>