On Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 09:39:21PM +0100, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote: > Yes, but lots of platforms fully migrate to 64-bit userland these days. Like > PowerPC, SPARC used to be 32-bit userland on a 64-bit kernel. However, Oracle > is shifting Linux for SPARC to 64-bit these days.
I think eventually maintaining the dual library builds and the tool chain and such starts to be a hassle, when things like web browsers and graphics editing programs and such start to have reasons to want more than 2 or 3GB of ram. So the tradeoff in performance versus the hassle of keeping a dual set of libraries around can change towards keeping things simpler instead once enough applications start to have reason to want 64 bit. Of course the x32 architecture existing at all makes you think not everyone is convinced it isn't worthwhile. -- Len Sorensen
