I can not find a single offical release of any amd64 dual opteron supported os. the distros i was hoping to get from the info i have now are redhat AS 3 for amd64, suse enterprise server 8, or mandrakes 9.2 for opterons. i have yet to find a release for either bsd or debian if anyone knows of a good distro or of a means to GET the iso in some way your help would be thanked.

Gentoo compiles on amd64, you might want to look into that. Just be prepared for a fairly lengthy install process.

If you want it for free and in an ISO, you're probably SOL as you've found.

Commercial releases are available, SuSE in particular
http//www.suse.com/us/business/products/server/sles/prices_amd64.html
This distro is the IBM "recommends".

Without the large wallet to support that distro, then Gentoo is probably your best bet..... Mandrake's web site indicates their AMD 64 distro wil soon be out ..... http//www.mandrakelinux.com/en-us/

i have found the srpms from the ga-tech mirror site off of red hat there version advanced server 3 is what i think i need i just need to now find out how to get the rpms to install(you see i am an exwindows user and newbie linux user so i am in end-user pergatory)

thanks for your help but while i am making the switch i had some idea linux was difficult due to the redhat 5.2 i had used for a little but had thought it was at least easier than earlyer versions(not to say i dont like challenges), so in short i am lost with no easy path to find my way save for this forum

I cut my teeth on Red Hat 5.2, it's definitely one of the better RH versions, later versions got steadily crappier after that. It wasn't exactly hard either, just different (Like Linux in general really, the rewards are there but you just have to be willing to put the time and effort in to find them).

I'd be surprised if you were able to find a legal source of RH Enterprise for free, as RH are positioning it as their sole Linux product now (the desktop distro has been handed over to a third party project and re-christened Fedora) and are currently asking a fair amount of money for it ($1500-2100 here in Oz, whatever that is in your money). Even if you do, it's probably overkill (unless the dual Opteron box in question is actually a server and not a workstation). Gentoo's still probably your best bet if you're looking for a no-nonsense distro for that kind of hardware.

Admiral LSD thanks for the help but my hard ware is server lvl i have 4 gb of ecc pc 3200 and 2 250 gb drives and 4 sata raptor drives for faaster tranfers oh and i cant leave out the gigabit ethernet i am not use too and also not seeing the jump in performance from anyway.

btw my email is hunter_a_man@yahoo.com if you or your "peeps" have what i am looking for oh and when i do get this server up ill be able to give a nice dump site for kind ppl such as yourself.

and always let the software developers get paid by the corperations that inslave them
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i started a 32 bit version of gentoo installation for a p4 and i have to say it is very nice for a newbie cause of its sinck or swim

i was woundering how to make it a 64 bit os once i install on my dual opteron server