Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2004 20:22:49 -0500 From: Jem Matzan <techsupport@thejemreport.com> To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Subject: Re: AMD64 support in 5.x versions Message-ID: <1073697769.733.27.camel@.rochester.rr.com> In-Reply-To: <btnjba$uao$1@sea.gmane.org> References: <Pine.GSO.4.44.0401071115150.8910-100000@odin.cs.kun.nl> <btnjba$uao$1@sea.gmane.org>
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On Fri, 2004-01-09 at 20:08, david wrote: > Jem Matzan wrote: > > I've tried just about everything AMD64 in terms of operating systems, > > and I can say for certain that no one is anywhere near the level of > > functionality that their i386 arch is. Even SuSE and RedHat with their > > retail box AMD64 distros only offer limited AMD64 functionality. Gentoo > > will install but few things will compile properly. I'd consider FreeBSD > > and NetBSD further along than Gentoo at this point, except for the fact > > that Gentoo can update its source code and FreeBSD can't (without the > > special hacked CVSup). > > FreeBSD would be a step ahead of everyone else if IA32 binary > > compatibility worked. > > > > -Jem > > What do you mean by "limited AMD64 functionality"? I am looking into > other forms of *nix due to the fact that linux compatibility is a must > for the programs I will be running. Any other information you can > provide pertaining to AMD64 + linux compatibility would be very useful. > > David > Well, about the only GNU/Linux distros that will work are the ones made for AMD64. SuSE 9.0 for x86 will work to a reasonable degree. I had a beta copy of SuSE 9.0 for AMD64 and it didn't work very well at all, neither did the RC2 of Mandrake 9.2 AMD64. It's since been overwritten and I've requested a retail edition of SuSE 9.0/AMD64 for review but it hasn't come. 3D accerleration for ATI video cards in Linux/AMD64 seems out of the question for right now. On the other hand it was out of the question for FreeBSD anyway. The most common problem I had with Linux was drivers for the SysKonnect LAN, and I don't have another card for testing. Some, like Fedora Core and Lycoris Update 3, would lock up or restart the machine. I wish I could just get an x86 GNU/Linux distro installed properly with all of the right drivers just so I can run VMWare 4 and maybe play UT2003 again now and then. Gentoo/AMD64 will install, but there are no boot loaders ported to AMD64 yet (for GNU/Linux anyway) and I had trouble compiling nearly everything I was interested in running. The last time I tried Gentoo/AMD64 was a week and a half ago and it was unusable. I tried FreeBSD 5.2-RC2 last night again, but there seems to be some kind of problem with dhclient and the SysKonnect LAN. It will try to connect to the DHCP server for about two minutes and then give up, leaving me with no Internet access. 5.2-CURRENT/x86 will do this now and then too, but usually when I see it stay too long at the dhclient message during startup, I hit ctrl-alt-del to restart the system and it generally loads fine after that. Sometimes I have to restart the system two or three times to get dhclient to load properly. On the AMD64 port though, I restarted a dozen times, reset my cable modem and router, switched cat5 cables... nothing works. So it's back to x86 again. Let me know if you get anything working in terms of GNU/Linux, specifically community distros... -- Jem Matzan <techsupport@thejemreport.com>
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