[x86-64] Opteron box coming --- what to install?

[marc.miller@amd.com]

Bart, thanks for responding here.  I agree; SuSE is the more stable way to go.  It's worthy of note that SuSE is not the only AMD64 Linux distribution out there.  Turbolinux 8 has been available since April, and is relatively inexpensive.  Mandrake Linux Corporate Server is also available.  There are also a couple of unsupported technology previews from various vendors available for free download.  

Putting a 64-bit kernel into a 32-bit distribution is also a great suggestion.  After all, Opteron is a superior 32-bit processor to anything before it, you'll be able to use all of the 32-bit packages you have today, and when you have AMD64 applications to run, you'll be poised to take advantage of the platform's 64-bit capabilities.

-----Original Message-----
From: Bart Trojanowski [mailto:bart@jukie.net]
Sent: Friday, May 16, 2003 3:28 PM
To: Alexander Shumakovitch
Cc: debian-x86-64-devel@lists.alioth.debian.org
Subject: Re: [x86-64] Opteron box coming --- what to install?


* Alexander Shumakovitch <shurik@math.unibas.ch> [030516 18:14]:
> Our department is going to receive a dual-Opteron box in a couple of
> weeks. It will be my task to manage it and I'm currently looking at
> software solutions available.
>
> So is it possible to make Debian running on this computer in any way, or
> should I go with SuSE? 

SuSE will be a more stable way to go.  I would imagine that they've been
testing their release for at least 4-6 months by now.

> I would certainly prefer the former, since almost all of our computers
> are running Debian and I'm much more comfortable with it. The box will
> mostly be occupied with heavy computations using custom C and C++
> programs. So basically the only 64-bit thing I need is a stable
> development environment (like gcc, gdb, libc6, ncurses, libreadline
> etc.) The rest being 32-bit is fine. What are the best options for me?

I believe that the best thing for you to do -- given that you want to
run Debian -- would be to install a 32bit user-space (like Woody or
Sarge) and then install a 64 bit kernel.  

If you choose Woody you should now compile and install your own
tool-chain.  See the x86-64.org website for details (or ask here).

If you choose Sarge you can do the above or install Arnd Bergmann's
bi-arch dev tools.

> I've looked at http://www.arndb.de/debian but am not sure I would be
> able to install Debian from scratch using the packages there.

Arnd is on this list so he can comment further.

Best of luck.

Bart.

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