[mythtv-users] New system coming: next Choosing an OS!

[DaveD]

When I was running my Athlon 3200+ as my main FE/BE, I got frustrated 
with the lack of support for x86_64 and ran both for a while, switching 
between the x86_64 version of FC6 and i386 version (dual boot config) 
while I tried to get things working in the x86_64 version.  The reason I 
gave it as much effort as I did is because I noticed a distinct (but not 
gigantic) improvement in overall speed in the x86_64 version over the 
i386.  Since then there has been much improvement in support for x86_64 
(thanks to Axel and Livna!) and I find there to be no problems with FC7 
x86_64 as long as I run the 32-bit version of Firefox for the Java and 
Flash support.  It's too bad, too, because Firefox is one place I 
noticed the improvement.  I have not tried FC8 yet.

I have tried Ubuntu x86_64 and it all worked.  It's a long story why I'm 
not running it now, but I think that will be my next distro.  There is a 
little learning curve, getting used to the lack of runlevels and no root 
account, but it's still Linux and there is excellent functionality out 
of the box (I think they even install 32-bit Firefox under x86_64 by 
default with java and flash) and lots of support in the forums.  I 
really liked not having to mix 3rd party repos that sometimes conflict 
to get all the apps I like (and a few I never knew about before!).

So, I guess I would recommend going with x86_64 if you want to get a 
couple percent more power.  It would be interesting (but probably not 
worth the effort) to set up a dual boot system and do a commflag on a 
2-hour high def show with both 32-bit and 64-bit versions to benchmark 
the difference.  Overall, though, the newer machines are so fast it 
probably wont make much difference in speed as the disk I/O becomes the 
bottleneck.  Let us know what you end up using and how it turns out.

DaveD.

stefan_jones at comcast.net wrote:
> I have a nice new host for my myth system on the way.  An Abit mb with NVIDIA chipset and gpu, AMD A64 X2 5200+ 2.7G, 4 gb of RAM.
>
> My current box is running Fedora Core 7 and Myth .21. Now, I'm pretty used to dealing with Fedora, and I'm not keen on switching to another distribution, but it can't hurt to think about it. 
>
> A bigger question: Not that I have a pretty stiff system with lots of RAM, should I think about installing 64 bit? Besides being able to get at more memory, are there any other advantages?
>
> --
> http://home.comcast.net/~stefan_jones
> _______________________________________________
> mythtv-users mailing list
> mythtv-users at mythtv.org
> http://mythtv.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mythtv-users
>
>