amd64 as an X desktop?

[Adriaan de Groot]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the informative post. So amd64 is headed for tier-1 status?
Have you actually tried running GNOME / KDE on it? THose are pretty
stressful and complicated things, that's why ia64 started trying to get
them to work.

On Fri, 3 Oct 2003, Peter Wemm wrote:
> > thinking of getting an amd64 box to play with, to perhaps sort out some of
> > the other 32-bit x86 linux-centric stuff in KDE. However, I'm a KDE guy,
> > not a kernel, X, or gdb guy, so I need to have that basis stable before I
> > can get anything done.
>
> issue.  Having said that, it does work pretty well.  I'm in the process of
> switching my primary desktop boxes (home and work) to amd64 machines.
> I just haven't quite gotten around to moving the files over yet.  David
> O'Brien had trouble with an nvidia card I believe.

OK, my primary goal is to find some combination of hardware that would
Just Work, based partly on what I can scrounge out of my current machines.
I would be mostly interested in what gcc 3.3 does with C++ code on the
amd64, and in hunting down endian/sizeness bugs in KDE.

> If you want to pick up a machine,  I've booted FreeBSD on both the asus SK8N
> and gigabyte K8N Pro (both nvidia nforce3 based).  I have not tried the
> asus K8V or whatever it is called (via K8T800 chipset based).  I've been meaning
> to try out a via based system to make sure there are no suprises.

Aye, and if I build two, you'll be glad to "test" one. Tella ya what, I'll
shell out a month's salary for just one box with a K8V, and let you know.
Although, by the time the parts arrive here, you'll probably have one
anyway.

> No, we do not have a driver for the onboard nvidia ethernet on the nforce3,
> but some of the boards I've seen have a realtek 8110 based gigabit ethernet
> (no driver) or a 3com/marvell gigabit chip (I dont know what this chip is).

This sounds like "there is no Gb LAN support at all anywhere".

> The ATA driver doesn't recognize some of the SATA or RAID hardware on these
> boards, but I've been able to use plain IDE drives no problem.

OK, I guess that's a start.  I can't tell whether the Promise 20378 RAID
controller is supported from the FBSD x86 HW support page -- that'd
provide 2 SATA ports already. And the LAN controller seems to be 3Com,
that can hardly be a problem.


-- 
 Adriaan de Groot    adridg at cs.kun.nl     Kamer A6020     024-3652272
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