64bit Advice For Linux Newbie?

I've almost no experience of Linux, but my new laptop will have an Athlon 64 chip and I was thinking of installing Suse Linux as a dual boot with Windows to allow me to run some processor-intensive applications in 64 bit. If I get on well with it I might even go over to Linux full time... Am I right in thinking that if I can get the software I want to run as source code (I think it's in C) and compile it in Suse, it will take full advantage of the processor's power? Does the standard edition of Suse have all of the applications necessary to do this? Finally, and most importantly - will it all work easily, quickly and simply, given that I'm a total Linux newbie?

Actually, your processor will be reconized as a 64bit with 9.1 or newer but some programs might be limited to you.

Hi

You can re-compile your C code with the standard GNU GCC compiler that comes with Linux. You have to tell te compiler what code to produce thu the command line switches.

eg.
mtune=athlon64
march=athlon64

If you use an IDE like KDevelop you can just select the Athlon in the properties(settings) dialog. KDevelop will do the rest for you. If speed is of the essence, you can also get a free non-commercial copy of the Intel 8.1 compiler, this will produce slightly faster code.

Robert