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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.""
The Fedora Core 1 for AMD64 Test1 Release FAQ is available. If you are having issues check it before posting a bug report.
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*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
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.
Now wash your hands.
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.
Stick Men
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 distros, and SuSE left a bad taste in my mouth when I tried 8.2 (it was a bit incompatible with every source package and most RPMs). I'm not saying RedHat was perfect (I tried SuSE BECAUSE RedHat had major problems at version 8, when I tried it), but seeing as it's RedHat, it's got it's advantages (RedHat Package Manager tends to work best with RedHat, by the way).