On 06/17/2011 12:25 AM, Joshua Judson Rosen wrote: > Indeed--where `whether something is 64bit-clean' was a natural question > to ask a few years back, 64-bit machines were unusual `specialty' hardware, > and many sofware projects just didn't have anyone involved who had > access to such machines..., now I find myself fielding questions > from users (though only occasionally!) about whether my packages > are `known to work on 32-bit systems', and I know that I'm not alone-- > I've seen messages on the mailing-lists for some of the embedded > projects with which I'm involved, where people ask things like: > > Is it possible to get a build of the toolchain that runs > on 32-bit hosts? > > I have a single 32-bit x86 machine left running in my workshop, > and don't have any plans to replace it with a similar vintage > when if it ever finally dies--I wouldn't even know where to > get x86-32 hardware, anymore. Thank goodness for chroots > and virtual machines, I guess. > > Reminds me of maddog's remark in his section on linuxpromagazine.com: > > > http://www.linuxpromagazine.com/Online/Blogs/Paw-Prints-Writings-of-the-maddog/Do-not-say-Closed-Source-or-Proprietary-Software-instead-say-Legacy-Software > > ... that `closed source' it's not merely closed source, but `legacy'-- > from the moment that the binaries ship. > > Seeing Adobe's comments, I posted this remark on identi.ca, yesterday: > > Adobe suprised that only 1% of downloads are for legacy > software that doesn't work or doesn't exist (wait—what?): > http://lwn.net/Articles/447576/ > Having been in the 64-bit world for 15 years I can comment to some extent. For the most part a 32-bit program will run fine on a 64-bit Linux. The main issue is that the vendor provide the appropriate 32-bit libraries, and Red Hat certainly does this with Fedora and RHEL. Also, you can expect a 32-bit application to run a bit faster on a 64-bit Linux than on a 32-bit Linux on the same hardware platform. The issue with Flash is that the 32-bit flash library will work fine on a 64-bit system with Firefox 64-bit through a wrapper (nsplugin). Or you can run the 32-bit Firefox. AFAIK, you can only download 32-but Firefox directly from Mozilla although most Linux distros carry the 64-bit version.
I've worked with companies who had native 32-bit and 64-bit builds of their products on various Unixes. Some vendors' 32-bit builds ran faster than their 64-bit builds, and others found their 64-but build ran faster. Additionally, AFAIK, neither AMD nor Intel make 32-bit chips any longer. My issue with 64-bit flash is that a couple of web sites don't render on the latest 64-bit flash, so I downgrade to the older flash. -- Jerry Feldman <g...@blu.org> Boston Linux and Unix PGP key id: 537C5846 PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846
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