Fedora Core 1 For AMD64 test1 Available

DrFishstik writes "From the Fedora Project Page: "A test release of Fedora Core 1 for AMD64 is now available from Red Hat and at distinguished mirror sites near you, and is also available in the torrent. Like the original x86 architecture release, the AMD64 architecture has three binary ISO images and three source ISO images. This is a single (we hope and intend) test release specifically to check hardware support; the package set is the same versions as an updated Fedora Core 1 for x86 system will have.""

Re:Woohoo!

[Trejkaz]

I like it. It puts the power back in the user.

FAQ available

[a.koepke]

The Fedora Core 1 for AMD64 Test1 Release FAQ [linuxtx.org] is available. If you are having issues check it before posting a bug report.

Mmm beer.

[BladeMelbourne]

It's a shame that AMD64 computers aren't "free as in beer" (like Fedora) so I could test this release of Fedora.

Fedora Cora 1 (up2date) on my i686 is very stable, it will be interesting to see if the 64 bit version is too. I thought RedHat 9 was polished, but Fedora did even better.

Re:what is Fedora?

[trouser]

Fedora is a freely distributed Linux distro. sponsored by Redhat but not supported by Redhat.

ie. if you want support for a distro you get from Redhat you buy one of the new Redhat branded products for about a gazillion dollars, otherwise download the free Fedora ISOs or use a different distro.

More info here [redhat.com].

Re:what is Fedora?

[bhtooefr]

I know someone replied to you already, but here's another description of it:

Think of Fedora as RedHat, except with a Debian-esque development model. Actually, it's built on the RedHat 9.1 beta code that was out before RedHat ditched their free/basic distro. Fedora is now RedHat's low end distro, except it now doesn't have support. The great news is that Fedora seems to be innovating, and not stagnating like RedHat seemed to do. I might try Fedora, especially as it's now becoming one of the major x86-64 dis

Re:what is Fedora?

[bhtooefr]

BTW, I don't own an x86-64 yet, but I'm looking hard at that eMachines laptop that /. mentioned earlier. One question: if you had two stores to pick from, and both sucked, which would you pick? They're Best Buy and Circuit City. BB sued FatWallet (very bad - especially when the fscking DMCA is brought in), CC made DiVX (not the video codec, the "rental" DVD - even worse, but it was a while ago).

ISOs for other platforms?

[trouser]

Looking at my local Fedora mirror I see there are RPMs for i386, ia64, ppc, ppc64, s390, s390x and x86_64, however there are no ISOs for platforms other than x86 and soon AMD64, though that hasn't hit my mirror yet.

I wonder if there are any plans to build ISOs for some of these platforms. PPC and PPC64 would be especially interesting to me as I already run Linux on a Mac and the Fedora packages are newer than those in the distro I'm using now. (eg. Gnome 2.4 vs. 2.2)

Apparently it's already possible to install Fedora on a Mac. First build a minimal YDL 3.01 system, then reconfigure the yum package manager to get Fedora PPC packages instead of YDL packages. Haven't tried it myself. Interesting though.

Re:ISOs for other platforms?

[trouser]

Don't know, that's just a list of directory names. Some of the names are a little more obvious that others.

Re:ISOs for other platforms?

[Wesley Felter]

Fedora uses an auto-build system (inherited from RHL/RHEL) which tries to build every SRPM for every known architecture. Just because a bunch of RPMs exist for weird architectures doesn't mean Fedora actually works on those architectures.

Benchmarks!

[Chris_Jefferson]

What I really want to see is some AMD 32-bit / 64-bit comparison benchmarks.. I've been unable to find any so far which show if recompiling in 64-bit mode is worth it in terms of speed boost (obviously it's useful to break the 4GB barrier, but does it also improve speed?)

Re:Benchmarks!

[turgid]

(obviously it's useful to break the 4GB barrier, but does it also improve speed?)

Yes, it does improve speed because in breaking the 4GB barrier, you now can process huge data sets without segmenting.

However, in 64-bit mode, there are also twice as many registers which makes for a heck of a speed improvement. Obviously legacy 32-bit code can't use the extra registers because is isn't written to use them, but a 64-bit opearating system kernel can, which improves speed there in many instances. There is an extra penalty on context switches, but this is far outweighed by the benefits.

As for benchmarks, there have been many unofficial performance comparisons. Google is your friend. As a general rule-of-thumb, the 64-bit Opteron is about 10-30% faster on legacy code than the Athlon XP. That's on a 32-bit kernel (that doesn't know about the extra registers).

Unofficially, I could tell you some performance numbers, but I fear the Men in Black.

Re:Benchmarks!

[bhtooefr]

What he wants to know is this: what happens if you take an AMD64 system, put (say) Fedora Core 1 x86 on the HDD, benchmark it, and then put an identically configured Fedore Core 1 test1 x86_64 system on, and benchmark that, will the x86_64 be significantly faster, due to the 64-bitness?

Re:Benchmarks!

[Chris_Jefferson]

I already know this! :)

I want comparison 32-bit linux/apps -> 64-bit linux/apps on the same computer!

Nice to see...

[salimma]

... that it still takes 3 CDs each for binaries and sources. I thought it might end up with more, since some libraries are available in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Since my dad wants an upgrade for his PC anyway, guess an Athlon 64 3000+ is the way to go then. Let's hope Indonesian vendors don't fleece their consumers as much as Malaysian ones for non-Intel hardware..