RedHat FC5 AMD64 on VMware Workstation 17
Fedora Core 5 x64 was the oldest of the AMD64 distros that I could get working within a VM. I found a version of Debian released about 1-2 years after the release of the AMD Opteron CPU. However, this version, along with any of the early AMD64 distros, kept crashing on both VMware and VBox. However, FC5 x64 worked, and that is where storytime starts...
AMD was not the first to the 64-bit race. The DEC Alpha, released in 1992 with the Alpha 21064, and meant for DEC's workstation; were 64-bit, along with the Sun Sparc V9 processors, which were released in 1993. However, their respective OS's (Solaris on Sparc and Ultrix and later it's WinNT port on the Alpha) were compiled for 32-bit. This made sense at the time as the main advantage gained by going 64-bit was bypassing the 4GB barrier imposed by 32-bit addressing. Most workstations that shipped between 94-96 usually came with 32/64MB's of RAM, so it wasn't like anyone was going to hit that barrier anytime soon. Intel, not wanting to be left out, started work on what would be there Archilles Heel, the Itanium Processor. While Intel expected to get this processor out in a timely manner, it kept getting delayed constantly, with it not dropping until 2001.
Like with the Sparc and Alpha, the Itanium was meant for proprietary workstations and given their specialized use; were a very expensive proposition. Also, they didn't have native x86 compatibility as x86 would become a thing of the past....ummm right? Thus, for these processor, x86 support had to be provided via emulation, which would incur a performance hit. So what though! It was believed that the days of x86 were numbered anyway, and thus, it would only be a matter of time for those with Visual Studio to compile their applications for Itanium right? It's not like AMD would just magically create a 64-bit processor quickly with native x86 support and x64 extensions in a timely matter, right?
Meanwhile, x86 was taking over the workstation world as Linux demonstrated that you could make powerful servers out of off-the-shelf commodity hardware. Most of these lower-priced systems generally went with AMD processors, like the K6-2. Generally, it was AMD that was playing catchup to Intel. However, AMD went for the kill and created their 64-bit platform, AMD64, that was also natively supported x86 code as well. Announced on 1999 with full specifications available on August 2000, AMD beat Intel to the punch with a 64-bit processor with native x86 support. The Opteron released in April 2000.
Now it was Intel that was playing catchup to AMD. Intel wasn't the only tech juggernaut caught off-guard. Linux distros were beating Microsoft to the punch, supporting AMD64 before the release of both Windows XP 64-bit and Server 2003 in 2005. Now there were 64-bit Windows XP and Server 2003 releases beforehand. However, they supported the Itanium processors. XP 64-bit for the AMD64 would eventually come, but there have already been various Linux distros by this point, like FC5 here.
The Fedora Project released FC5 was released on March 20th, 2006. This was around the same time that XP 64-bit was out, so it would have made a good eqvlent of comparison. On one hand, XP felt more polished. However, native Win64 applications on XP were near non-existent, whereas FC5 already had a very massive software library due to code being recompiled for AMD64. Also, FC5 generally had much great hardware support compared to XP. One could open applictions gallore and not worry about memory. FC5 could easily hold its own against XP. It would be a while before Adobe updated Photoshop for 64-bit, but GIMP was already taking full advantage of that 64-bit computing by handling very massive images with unreal pixel resolutions. This VM was screaming at times, but FC5 held.
VMware is virtualizing a x64 Workstation with a single core allocated to it and 6GB's of RAM. The host has an AMD Ryzen 5 5500 6-Core processor. There is a VESA-Compatible display adapter with XFree86 running at 1024 by 768. I'm assumig that FC5 is running in the 16-bit color depth. There is a Intel PRO/1000 MT Ethernet Adapter installed, along with a High Definition Audio Device. The system has a 30GB HD with the AMD64 version of RedHat Fedora Core 5 Linux Operating System installed.
Songs Used
HouseMaster
https://discmaster.textfiles.com/view...
(80% of Playback Speed)
Discmaster
Life By Cactus
https://www.exotica.org.uk/mediawiki/...
(75% of Playback Speed)
Amiga ExoticA Database
Software Used:
Recorded With OBS Studio
Composed In Kdenlive
Hardware Used:
PC equipped with a
AMD Ryzen 5 5500 CPU
6 Cores Running At 4.2GHz
AMD Radeon RX570 GPU
Windows 11