[R] Which Linux OS on Athlon amd64, to comfortably run R?

[8rino-Luca Pantani]

Dear R-users.
I eventually bought myself a new computer with the following 
characteristics:

Processor AMD ATHLON 64 DUAL CORE 4000+ (socket AM2)
Mother board ASR SK-AM2 2
Ram Corsair Value 1 GB DDR2 800 Mhz
Hard Disk WESTERN DIGITAL 160 GB SATA2 8MB

I'm a newcomer to the Linux world.
I started using it (Ubuntu 7.10 at work and FC4 on laptop) on a regular 
basis on May.
I must say I'm quite comfortable with it, even if I have to re-learn a 
lot of things.  But this is not a problem, I will improve my knowledge 
with time.

My main problem now, is that I installed Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy Gibbon on the 
new one amd64.

To install R on it i followed the directions found here
http://help.nceas.ucsb.edu/index.php/Installing_R_on_Ubuntu

but unfortunately it did not work.

After reading some posts on the R-SIG-debian list, such as

https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-sig-debian/2007-October/000253.html

I immediately realize that an amd64 is not the right processor to make 
life easy.

Therefore I would like to know from you, how can I solve this problem:
Should I install the i386 version of R ?
Should I install another flavour of Linux ?
Which one ?
Fedora Core 7 ?
Debian ?

Thanks a lot, for any suggestion

-- 
Ottorino-Luca Pantani, Università di Firenze
Dip. Scienza del Suolo e Nutrizione della Pianta
P.zle Cascine 28 50144 Firenze Italia
Tel 39 055 3288 202 (348 lab) Fax 39 055 333 273 
OLPantani at unifi.it  http://www4.unifi.it/dssnp/