Re: [linux-audio-user] AMD64 question: update

Dave,
   Very sorry for the late reply. I'm an ungrately lout for sure. ;-)

On 7/11/06, Dave Phillips <dlphillips@email-addr-hidden> wrote:
> Greetings:
>
> The final pieces are coming together for the new iron here at Studio
> Dave. I have two last questions (well, for now) :
>
> Is this a good selection for the hard disk:
>
> Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3400633A 400 GB 7200 RPM 16MB cache
> EIDE Ultra ATA100, new with Seagate warranty, $166

Being ATA100 it's not the fastest drive out there but 400GB is
certainly nice storage.

QUESTION: Are you going with a single drive or will there be separate
system and audio drives?

>
> I'm considering trying a new distro. Gentoo and Ubuntu are
> recommended, so I might look at them. However, my main question is: Do I
> necessarily want to install a kernel for a 64-bit CPU ? IIUC I'm better
> off running most Linux audio applications in 32-bit mode, which I
> understand occurs seamlessly. But do I need to use a 32-bit kernel for
> those apps, or do I need to install the 64-bit ? (Is that a dumb question?)

OK, here goes the tough stuff.

Gentoo is great. I run it on all my systems now. That said it is a
STEEP learning curve and will likely take you 3-5 days to bring it up
and get it to run Ardour for the first time if you've never done it
before. I just rebuilt my son's machine - an AMD Athlon 2000+. It took
the better part of two days before he could use it.

NOTE: It is NOT that the Gentoo install is all that difficult. It just
takes a lot of time to build everything. I do not use the new
installer. I do it all by hand. Maybe the installer works and gets it
done fast. I don't know. Anyway, be prepared for a long slog your
first time through. In fact, if you have a junk machine sitting around
I would STRONGLY recommend building Gentoo on it, getting it running,
and then sending it back to the junk pile just to get the experience
before you strt working on a machine you really care able, but that's
just me.

After Gentoo is built the big advantage is you never have to
'upgrade'. You just continually 'update' programs to keep the current.
I have a couple of machines I haven't touched in 2 years now and they
ae as up to date as anything you would build today on the same
hardware. I like that but many people do not.

Thee are issue with Gentoo, like slotting, that continue to frustrate
me, but I think I'm not such an IT guy to be good at that.

Hope this helps even a little.

cheers,
Mark
Received on Thu Jul 13 00:15:05 2006