What are the pros and cons of a good linux 64-bit distro?

More specifically...what is it capable of? And what can it not do? I have never used linux before and I am putting together a new system that will dual-boot. I want to use XP for games and linux to play around with. Other than pros and cons, what distro will take advantage of multi-cores and 4gb+ ram? Can you run games on a linux system with a VM?

What are the pros and cons of a good linux 64-bit distro?
If you are not familiar with Linux I suggest go for the VM environment instead of dual boot. One cool thing about VM environment is you can share resources easily and much less time to switch back and forth. On the con side it takes double RAM for running VM environment.





Few things to consider.


- 64 bit VM will only work with 64 bit base OS. So if you install 32 bit base OS 64 bit VM can't be created. (XP/2003 server or Vista)


- Use Red hat or Suse or some well supported Linux distribution. You might run into a bunch of driver issues


- Make sure you have lots of RAM. I suggest 2 GB or more. VM uses physical ram and not paging file so you need 512-1024 MB ram for base OS and256 to 512 MB for guest OS.


- Check for RHOS logos for driver availability. Or stick to 1-2 year older hardware you will definitely find drivers





Most of 64 bit distros will make use of RAM more than 4 GB some base OS will not for e.g.Windows XP will only recognize 3 GB of ram even if you have 4 GB installed. For that matter Linus started supporting 64 bit and 1 TB of ram at least 3 years before windows did.





Only problem I have with dual boot is if you don't have network driver it takes long time to down load and install until you get internet going.





You can run pretty much all games on Linux VM. I am using SUSE and windows server for my setup and it's running greate. I only have problems with Wireless Lan and under Linux while running under dual boot.

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