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64-bit Linux On The Opteron

Posted by timothy on from the unchecked-envy dept.

JigSaw writes "A few moths ago Robert Minvielle put to test AMD's Opteron regarding its 64-bit Linux compatibility. The results back then were not very positive but he is now back testing more 64-bit updated distros: Gentoo, SuSE, Mandrake, Red Hat and Fedora. And this time the results are more positive with Linux offering good Opteron support where Windows-64 doesn't seem to. FreeBSD also lists the AMD64 platform as a tier-1 architecture."

2 of 325 comments (clear)

  1. I don't even know where to start by davegust · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    So JigSaw reads an interesting write up about the struggles in getting several 64 bit distros to boot, and spins it Linux offers good Opteron support where Windows-64 doesn't seem to.

    Here's a summary of the "good support":

    • Couldn't get X to work at all on Gentoo. Wouldn't even compile.
    • Mandrake wouldn't install - failed to recognize the partitions even of a freshly formatted disk
    • Suse 8.2 random lockups - no support for the network card on the ASUS board
    • Suse 9 - failed to load kernel until ACPI was turned off - did eventually boot and run after 2.5 hours of install
    • A lot of standard packages crash hard, or even fail to compile
    • No NVIDIA support at all

    Please stop...your spinning makes me nauseous.

  2. So, where to find a motherboard for the Opteron? by mwood · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Preferably without any Nvidia (unsupportable) or VIA (never saw a VIA chipset that didn't need weird secret tweaks to work at all) parts?