"If you're still using the 2.4 kernel rather than the newer 2.6, you're more likely to have problems with new hardware. Even parts made as recently as a year ago may be unsupported in the 2.4 series. Such devices include serial ATA (SATA) hard drives, controllers, and RAID adapters, and motherboards based on the nForce 3 chipset. You're also likely to experience a number of serious problems related to Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI). If you must use the 2.4 kernel, use the latest one, or at very least something newer than 2.4.24.
"If you're planning on going with an AMD64 processor and want to run in 64-bit mode, you're much better off with the 2.6 kernel. Mandrake, SUSE, Gentoo, and Fedora Core all have good 64-bit editions for the AMD64 architecture. If you're interested in BSD, both NetBSD and FreeBSD have AMD64 editions as well..."
