Being new to linux I don't really know the relative merits of one distribution over another!

Which linux distribution for 64 bit processors would you recommend?

I would recommend whichever distribution that you feel most comfortable with. If you don't want to have to download a new kernel, you may want to find one that uses the 2.6 kernel tree.

My favorite distro (slackware) is still shipped with the 2.4.22 tree. However debian is an excellent distribution and it appears that 3.0 has full IA-64 support.

I don't think that there is a distrubution that is only for the 64-bit processors, so I believe that you will have to reconfigure and compile your kernel, setting your processor type appropriately.

Man, I wish I had one of these to experiment with. I would be really curious to do some performance evaluations with it. I wonder what kind of boost you will get from compiling in a 64-bit kernel? If you do get something set up, I would like to hear back about it.

Good luck!

Thanks!

I'll have a play with various bits, and let you know what happens!

For anyone interested in Linux64 (my name for Linux on 64-bit processors ) there's some articles on Anandtech. They have benchmarks and comparisons between chips and OS's. Here'sthe link.

__________________
Start Programming with Python-A beginner's guide to programming and the Python language.
-------------
Common Sense v2.0-Striving to make the world a little bit smarter.

i suggest you try the popular ones first
Fedora Core and Gentoo

__________________
http://www.cdhouse.biz
Cheap Linux, FreeBSD, OpenOffice CDs

I would highly recommend Fedora

64-bit linux still has some quirks - for example, there is not a 64-bit version of the Java plugin - so you have to install the 32 bit browser to use Java - but Fedora seems to be the most mature 64-bit distribution.