Few questions before installing on amd64

Birnenpfluecker

Hi folks,
not sure if this should go here or in the installation forum, but I will post it here.
I'm waiting for my new AMD machine, and want to install gentoo on it.
1. I will dual boot with winXP. So for that I must install Windows first, right?
2. How do I get a 64 bit system? Have read some things in the forum about 32bit and 64 bit with amd64.
3. What are the best cflags for amd64?
4. I want to install OOffice, mozilla, LICQ, mplayer, xmms, wine, windowmaker and I think I will try gnome. Will I have problems on this side?
5. I'm going to use latest gentoo-dev-sources, but not sure which gcc I should use. Any hints?
6. Is there something really important, I forget, but must consider?

Hope you guys can give me some help.

frank0 · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 3:26 pm Post subject:

Generally you should read http://dev.gentoo.org/~brad_mssw/amd64-tech-notes.html. It has a lot of useful information for Gentoo on amd64

ad 1. It might perhaps also work the other way round, but with Win first you're on the safe side.
ad 2. Just use an amd64 live-CD
ad 3. Define "best cflags".
ad 4. OOffice works as 32bit-binary within a 64bit-system. Mozilla, mplayer, xmms, gnome, windowmaker are unmasked. IIRC licq is listed in the Thread "Masked applications that work", just have a look there. Only wine seems to make problems. try searching this forum for "wine amd64" for more info
ad 5. I can see no reason, why you shouldn't use gcc-3.3.3, which is default atm.

HTH, Frank

J.M.I.T. · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 3:35 pm Post subject:

himpierre · l33t Joined: 31 Aug 2002 Posts: 867 Location: Berlin

Funny. All three guys from germany talking english. Oh... me included 4. :-)

Thomas

edit: Maybe we need a german amd64 forum. :twisted:

The Ennead · Posted: Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:15 pm Post subject:

Yeah but the funniest thing is you all speak it better than we do!! :lol:

Xp first is by far the easiest way but it doesn't make a great deal of difference, in as much as XP is so unreliable I usually reinstall it every 6 months anyway. Doing that effectively means I install xp 2nd a few times and what that does is overwrite the boot record so Gentoo is no longer recognised. This you then have to reverse by booting from the live cd and chroot into your gentoo system from there, then, reinstall grub again.

The other thing to note with XP is that it will only boot if it's on the primary boot drive. That being the case you will need to set aside a small partition or larger one for Gentoo on that first drive. There is one way around this (may be others) I know of and that is with my board the Asus K8v, it gives you the option to press F8 at the post screen and choose your boot device from there. A very useful feature that allows me to choose to boot from either my sata install (xp) hda (32bit) hdb(64bit) or cdrom, without having to change bios settings or complex boot combinations on one drive.

2) Yep, just grab the 64bit live cd and away you go. I usually have F2 & F3 running during the install as well and use the F2 screen to run the command
links http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handbook/handbook.xml?part=1 and that way I can always refer to the latest instructions as i'm going along. F3 I just use for general browsing so I don't get bored.

3)

4)The binary OOffice works fine on mine but needs the addition of the line FEATURES="-sandbox" in /etc/make.conf before it will compile, mozilla works fine for me, xmms also, the others I haven't tried but there's a list @ https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=125730 of all the stuff people have got working or have worked straight away.

5) Whichever the default is worked fine for me but I'm not sure of the version atm.

6) Yep, blue neons

Birnenpfluecker · Posted: Sat Feb 28, 2004 6:46 pm Post subject:

thx for all the answers.
Seems will have not much problems. Wine is not so important, cause of dual boot. With the cflags, I think I should it formulate otherwise. With which cflags do you run your system? The reinstallation of Xp will not be that problem, plan to install XP on one drive and gentoo on the other one, if nothing other works, I will remove one hd from the bios.

himpierre · l33t Joined: 31 Aug 2002 Posts: 867 Location: Berlin

Hello

I run my system with standard settings. emerge info output:

Cr0t · l33t Joined: 27 Apr 2002 Posts: 944 Location: USA

Yen · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 5:46 pm Post subject:

Microsoft's support for AMD64 is even worse then Microsoft's support for appz on Linux...
Well, that's all i've heard from the Windows XP 64-bit reviews

fredle · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2004 Posts: 5 Location: Belgium

like ms did anything good...

it's an evil company whit bad software ;-)

_________________
runnin' gentoo 'cause it rules

Cr0t · l33t Joined: 27 Apr 2002 Posts: 944 Location: USA

crazycat · Posted: Thu Mar 04, 2004 1:05 am Post subject:

CFLAGS="-O2 -pipe -frename-registers -fomit-frame-pointer -mno-align-stringops"

I successfully run gentoo with this cflags without lockups or instability problems.