I have the 32-bit version of Mandriva 2008 installed, but since my system uses a duo core 64-bit processor, I was thinking of installing the 64-bit version of Mandriva 2008. Are there any issues I should be concerned about. Is flashplayer installed by default in the 64-bit edition?

Hi RevJack. I'm not sure if there any any issues with a 64 version of 2008.0, but your main issue is that there is lots of software that is still unsupported. That's slowly changing, but unless you're interested in spending alot of time in front of your screen reconfiguring packages so they work with 64 bit, I don't recommend it.

I looked at installing 2007.1 64 bit before 2008.0 came out, and foundit worked pretty well on my box, but as I didn't know much about linux then I thought it would make my life difficult. Now that I know more about Linux, I KNOW it would have made my life more difficult. For the increased processing power of some applications (graphically, mostly, I believe), I doubt it's worth the extra hassle, and/or lack of available software for that platform. That said, have a look at the erratta notes for 2008.0. I'm sure any issues will be listed there. Cheers.

I must agree with the above. I also have a 64 bit dual core system, but the rest of the software industry is not yet working toward that end. Many things will not work because the drivers have simply not been written. I say that meaning that you can still use 32bit stuff in some cases, but then that defeats the purpose of having a 64 bit system, yes?

To cut a long story short, thou should forget about 64-bit OS... unless you want to experiment.
Your performance gain for regular usage will be from tiny (at the very best) to negative, and some things will be a pain to install and get running.
Check back in about one year, or so... ATM using 64-bit OS on a big production server is pretty normal (and indicated), but on desktop it is simply not-quite-ready-yet.

Thanks guys.

My two cents. Having tried Mandriva 2007 on my Core 2 Duo. The slight performance gain is not really worth the hassle. I know that was said up there, but I wanted to speak from experience.
If you want to use java in your browser, you have to install the 32-bit version, and therefore, the 32-bit version of your browser.
If there is a working 64-bit flash, I never got it to work.
The main reason I went back to the 32-bit version was that I needed to install Oracle and there is no 64-bit version of Oracle for Linux.

I kind of agree - 64-bit is nice to have but it's not quite there yet.

I've just given up struggling to get Mandriva 2008.1 x64 working on a AMD 64x2 workstation built around a Gigabyte GA-MA770-DS3 and an Nvidia 8600 graphics card.

In this case most things work but a few critical ones only almost work Specifically, the Nvidia graphics driver locks up the system when I start a second X session, burning CDs or DVDs always produces coasters, USB hot-plugging is utterly broken and there's an overall feeling that the system is teetering on the edge of falling apart. By contrast, the the 32-bit version of Mandriva 2008.1 is rock-solid on the same kit.

Other 64-bit distros I tried fared similarly, or worse. As far as I've been able to discover the problems are primarily related to the chipsets on the Motherboards. Basically, the AMD chipsets that support the A2 and A2+ sockets (used by the AMD64, AMD64x2 and AMD64x3 and AMDx4) are not yet correctly supported under Linux64. although they seem to be OK with Linux32.

The good news is that Linux64 apparently works with the Nvidia chipsets used on A2/A2+ boards - although YMMV, as usual. The bad news, for me, is that I'm stuck with a Gigabyte board, which while it is pretty good in all other respects, uses an AMD chipset.

I'd agree that the x32 Linux distros are more mature and x64 distros aren't yet 'pure' 64-bit. however, there are two real benefits to using a 64-bit build if you can.
1) At least in my case the 64-bit build, while not begin enormously faster, did seem snappier and more responsive than is it's 32-bit sibling on the same machine.

2) The performance improvement is arguably small enough not to matter much but the big advantage of using an x64 build is the increased memory space. A x32 build can only access a maximum of 4GB of RAM. The system overhead and any RAM on the graphics board has to fit in that space so if the graphics card has 512MB on-board you may only see a maximum of around 3300MB of usable RAM. With a 64-bit build you can see all 4GB, or use 8GB or more. (I currently have 4GB in the machine and an additional 4GB sitting on a shelf waiting for my system to go back to 64-bit operation.)

I"m going to run my 64-bit system in 32-bit mode until the end of the year and then try moving it to 64-bits again. Or maybe save up for a motherboard with an Nvidia chipset...