Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote: The problem here is that you appear to be massively underestimating the amount of work that would be required to actually support this configuration. Support is a multi-valued thing as well as a process. Not every i has to be dotted for something to be of use. E.g. there are secondary arches to act as staging grounds. I would not except everything to be magically perfect tomorrow, however there may be low-hanging fruit (like yum having separate notions of default native word-size for userspace and kernel, see below). We'd need to audit every ioctl entry point, every file in proc and every sysfs attribute. Or just let people file bugs as they find things.. We'd need to port every application that uses vm86 over to using x86emu. Or let people using such apps continue to use a 32bit kernel (such kernel would have to continue to be supported, obv). We'd need to add, test and support a 32-to-64 bit cross building toolchain. GCC has a -m64 flag that may or may not help somewhat there (though, it got b0rken, though possibly just in combination with profiling). yum would need some amount of work that Seth has implied is significant. That's may be the easiest bit. It updates packages just fine, except it doesn't know I want it to install 64bit kernels, after I forced it to think the machine was 32bit. That's a lot of work for marginal benefits, and nobody seems interested in stepping up to do that work. I.e. money meet mouth, mouth likewise, you mean? :) I'll try poke at it later in 2010. I'm more a C programmer than a python programmer, so I'd rather look at stuff like things like the SG_IO interface (which Peter Jones pointed me at in private) than at yum, but I'll see. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: One of the disadvantages of having children is that they eventually get old enough to give you presents they make at school. -- Robert Byrne -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Debarshi Ray wrote: He is just pointing out that there is lot more work to do than you think. In other words he is contesting your claim that "The kernel side apparently works fine AFAICT". Well, I don't really know how to else to counter "there may be unknown bugs". Kernel sub-system interfaces generally are well-designed and specified (i.e. explicit widths of fields). Booting a system and using it for a while exercises many of the important ones. Could there be bugs in some lesser-used, oddball interface? Of course (and I am sure there are - I think I gave an example in a thread earlier this year). They're likely to reasonably trivial bugs though (oversights in the interface specification, e.g. a 'long' instead of a __u32, etc). If there really are interfaces that are so messed up that they'd be hard to fix up, then that's probably a warning sign that the code may have deeper, bigger problems. People who run into such bugs can always go back to a 32bit kernel (standard or PAE) until it's fixed, if it even affects them. They're put back in the same position as they're in now, which I'm sure must be acceptable. Anyway.. I'll try look into this again later next year, and see if I can fix the "bugs" (in the RFE sense for yum, libvirt) I found. Was simply hoping to get other people interested in 32-on-64, no more or less. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: "Do you believe in intuition?" "No, but I have a strange feeling that someday I will." -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 06:29:17PM +, Paul Jakma wrote: > On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote: > >> "It works for me" is a poor standard of support. > > There must be something transmogrifying my emails before it reaches > other subscribers of this list, either that or I am being unreasonable in > thinking that by asking /if/ Fedora would consider *supporting* this > configuration (i.e. in the future) that it would be clear that: > - I am not complaining about software not working quite right now The problem here is that you appear to be massively underestimating the amount of work that would be required to actually support this configuration. We'd need to audit every ioctl entry point, every file in proc and every sysfs attribute. We'd need to port every application that uses vm86 over to using x86emu. We'd need to add, test and support a 32-to-64 bit cross building toolchain. yum would need some amount of work that Seth has implied is significant. That's a lot of work for marginal benefits, and nobody seems interested in stepping up to do that work. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
>> "It works for me" is a poor standard of support. > > There must be something transmogrifying my emails before it reaches other > subscribers of this list, either that or I am being unreasonable in thinking He is just pointing out that there is lot more work to do than you think. In other words he is contesting your claim that "The kernel side apparently works fine AFAICT". Cheers, Debarshi -- One reason that life is complex is that it has a real part and an imaginary part. -- Andrew Koenig -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote: "It works for me" is a poor standard of support. There must be something transmogrifying my emails before it reaches other subscribers of this list, either that or I am being unreasonable in thinking that by asking /if/ Fedora would consider *supporting* this configuration (i.e. in the future) that it would be clear that: - I do not expect it to be supported already - I am not complaining about software not working quite right now E.g. I was impressed at how yum pretty much works (with minor tweaking to override which arch it think it's running on). I didn't mean to complain or whinge or intend for people to think I had silly expectations of this being supported already. Apologies if I did and/or if that's how it came across. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: ASHes to ASHes, DOS to DOS. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote: On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:30:11AM +, Paul Jakma wrote: On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote: And the remaining 0.1% of the work is probably the other 99.9% of the time. I think you massively underestimate the number of corner cases present in an utterly untested configuration. My data-point is that I ran an x86-64 kernel on i386 F10 for a few months until I got tired of yum not being able to update kernel packages. The kernel side apparently works fine AFAICT. The .1% is yum. "It works for me" is a poor standard of support. and if running an x86_64 kernel on an i386 install is something we want to do then we can make some changes to make that work. But complaining that yum doesn't work for something it was never designed to work for is a bit silly. -sv "My this camel is not a very fast swimmer." -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 12:30:11AM +, Paul Jakma wrote: > On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote: > >> And the remaining 0.1% of the work is probably the other 99.9% of the >> time. I think you massively underestimate the number of corner cases >> present in an utterly untested configuration. > > My data-point is that I ran an x86-64 kernel on i386 F10 for a few > months until I got tired of yum not being able to update kernel > packages. The kernel side apparently works fine AFAICT. The .1% is yum. "It works for me" is a poor standard of support. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Once upon a time, Paul Jakma said: > My data-point is that I ran an x86-64 kernel on i386 F10 for a few > months until I got tired of yum not being able to update kernel > packages. The kernel side apparently works fine AFAICT. The .1% is > yum. No, it's the whole development environment. For example, if you need to build a kernel module, gcc on i386 is not capable of building for x86_64 (IIRC it isn't a gcc configuration issue, it is an issue with gcc itself). You could just always install the x86_64 gcc, but then you need all the development tools and libraries to match. "gcc hello.c" is going to generate native code, and native will still be x86_64, so you have to have the x86_64 shared libraries and support in place (and now you're back to a multilib system, which loses on RAM usage, disk space, install time, update downloads, etc.). Also, part of your justification was that in the "real world", people run some 32 bit anyway (like wine). Well, what happens with some of those "real world" binary modules people use, like nVidia? Do they work with a split 32/64 user/kernel space (and development stack somewhere in between)? If they don't, users are going to blame Fedora, not nVidia (or whoever else ships binary modules). Again, most of the Fedora people developing things like yum, anaconda, etc. don't appear to be interested in this; there just doesn't seem to be a significant benefit (okay, you save a little RAM, but for the majority of 64 bit systems, that isn't a big deal). If you think otherwise, nobody is stopping you from doing the work to make it happen, and if it proves to work and be a benefit, I bet it would be accepted. -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, 16 Dec 2009, Paul Jakma wrote: My data-point is that I ran an x86-64 kernel on i386 F10 for a few months until I got tired of yum not being able to update kernel packages. The kernel side apparently works fine AFAICT. The .1% is yum. Oh, I don't quite remember the details, but I think libvirt also gets a bit confused when its 32bit and the kernel is 64. Another data-point is that I've used and developed on other 32/64 x86-64 systems for a number of years and those manage it just fine. It really shouldn't be hard, if you decide its worth supporting. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Life is like an onion: you peel off layer after layer and then you find there is nothing in it. -- James Huneker -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Matthew Garrett wrote: And the remaining 0.1% of the work is probably the other 99.9% of the time. I think you massively underestimate the number of corner cases present in an utterly untested configuration. My data-point is that I ran an x86-64 kernel on i386 F10 for a few months until I got tired of yum not being able to update kernel packages. The kernel side apparently works fine AFAICT. The .1% is yum. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Lots of folks confuse bad management with destiny. -- Frank Hubbard -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 10:54 PM, Paul Jakma wrote: > On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Paul Jakma wrote: > >> I would like to have the advantages of *both* 32 and 64bit, as and where >> each one is appropriate. I'd like to be able to use that 30-60% of memory on >> more VMs, e.g., rather than bigger gnome-*, etc. processes. > > Ah, and to get the memory benefits, you need a "generally-32bit" userspace > (32bit apps on x86-64 obviously works just fine, but there's no savings > benefit when most of userspace is 64bit). > > Sorry again for the noise. :) There are shops that sells stuff called "ram sticks" ;) (sorry I will shut up already) -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Paul Jakma wrote: I would like to have the advantages of *both* 32 and 64bit, as and where each one is appropriate. I'd like to be able to use that 30-60% of memory on more VMs, e.g., rather than bigger gnome-*, etc. processes. Ah, and to get the memory benefits, you need a "generally-32bit" userspace (32bit apps on x86-64 obviously works just fine, but there's no savings benefit when most of userspace is 64bit). Sorry again for the noise. :) regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Your own qualities will help prevent your advancement in the world. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 10:28 PM, Paul Jakma wrote: > - I am incredulous at the people who keep arguing that "x86-64 is > better" because it has PC-relative addressing, or because the ABI > is pass-by-register by default. I am extremely sceptical that > these respondents would be able to distinguish between a 32bit > and a 64bit "cp" or "nautilus" or "ls" or "gnome-panel" or ... etc. > > It'd be interesting to see if this applied even to browsers. > (E.g. Chrome on 32bit is extremely fast, hard to see that it'd > get much faster on 64. Firefox is slow on 64bit too). Well while there was no x86_64 chromium build midori (which uses webkit) was faster in every JS while the whole web was praising google's V8 as the fastest JS engine ... Once the 64bit chromium come out, this was indeed the case. So a software that is supposed to be slower than another one was faster only because it was running an x86_64 version. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 09:28:10PM +, Paul Jakma wrote: > And again, far from being some incredibly difficult thing that I'm > asking for, the support is pretty much 99.9% there.. And the remaining 0.1% of the work is probably the other 99.9% of the time. I think you massively underestimate the number of corner cases present in an utterly untested configuration. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, 15 Dec 2009, Jon Masters wrote: But again, Apples to Oranges. x86_64 (we should formally call it "Intel 64", or similar, since I'm not aware of x86_64 having a formal blessing) doesn't have the fixed instruction width that you get on most RISC ISAs. It's not about the instruction set. If you look back at the posts, from myself and the poster who gave a toy test case, the extra memory usage is from data, not from programme text. Programme text is not too significant in size when compared to data (about a 10:1 data:text ratio for cases I've looked at). So the instructions being compact is simply not very relevant - pointers and longs in *data* double up in size on 64bit. (This transcends specific ISAs..). the US, but here at least someone drew my attention to a ludicrously cheap laptop on sale last weekend that also had 3GB of RAM installed. Right. I.e. a 64bit *kernel* is very useful (and much faster than a PAE one). That's precisely what I am arguing for. Again, there is a difference between aggregate usage (e.g. of RAM) and per-process memory requirements, similarly for performance. I.e. in the aggregate, a system can make good use of *both* 32 and 64 bit. I.e.: - In the aggregate, systems now need to make efficient use of >3GB of memory - PAE (slow, other problems) - 64bit - more and more systems have this, it'd be nice to be able to use this with a 32bit install. - On a per-process basis, few processes need 64bit pointers - those which do, can easily be 64bit on a 32/64 system. - those which can be 32bit can avoid a circa 30 to 60% memory overhead - On a per-process basis, few processes need the advantages of x86-64 - I am incredulous at the people who keep arguing that "x86-64 is better" because it has PC-relative addressing, or because the ABI is pass-by-register by default. I am extremely sceptical that these respondents would be able to distinguish between a 32bit and a 64bit "cp" or "nautilus" or "ls" or "gnome-panel" or ... etc. It'd be interesting to see if this applied even to browsers. (E.g. Chrome on 32bit is extremely fast, hard to see that it'd get much faster on 64. Firefox is slow on 64bit too). - those processes which do, can be 64bit I would like to have the advantages of *both* 32 and 64bit, as and where each one is appropriate. I'd like to be able to use that 30-60% of memory on more VMs, e.g., rather than bigger gnome-*, etc. processes. A lot of respondents have argued as if this is a binary matter, approaching the debate as if it's an either-or choice between 32 OR 64, which was not my intention at all. And again, far from being some incredibly difficult thing that I'm asking for, the support is pretty much 99.9% there.. Anyway :) Sorry for extending this thread, but it seemed I miscommunicated in previous emails and failed to get the basic points across properly. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Seeing is believing. You wouldn't have seen it if you hadn't believed it. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, Dec 15, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Jon Masters said: >> But again, Apples to Oranges. x86_64 (we should formally call it "Intel >> 64", or similar, since I'm not aware of x86_64 having a formal blessing) > > "Intel 64" has no "formal blessing" either (it is Intel's marketing name > for their copy of AMD's instruction set). If you want to call it after > a vendor, it should be "AMD 64" anyway, since AMD created it. They > called it "x86-64" (which is where the "x86_64" name came from), until > marketing got in the way and they changed to "AMD 64". > > "Intel 64" is confusing anyway, since Intel has pushed multiple 64 bit > architectures. Also there is the x64 marketing bullshit floating around -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Once upon a time, Jon Masters said: > But again, Apples to Oranges. x86_64 (we should formally call it "Intel > 64", or similar, since I'm not aware of x86_64 having a formal blessing) "Intel 64" has no "formal blessing" either (it is Intel's marketing name for their copy of AMD's instruction set). If you want to call it after a vendor, it should be "AMD 64" anyway, since AMD created it. They called it "x86-64" (which is where the "x86_64" name came from), until marketing got in the way and they changed to "AMD 64". "Intel 64" is confusing anyway, since Intel has pushed multiple 64 bit architectures. -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Tue, 2009-12-15 at 16:54 +, Paul Jakma wrote: > On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Chris Adams wrote: > > > Have you actually shown any concrete benefits, or has it all just been > > hand-waving? > > Well, the benefits were already known from the introduction of 64bit > systems in the mid 90s. E.g. a rule of thumb with AXP systems was > that they required at least 30% odd more RAM, compared to other Unix > systems (either 32bit, or 32-userspace/64kernel systems - which is > what most of the other Unix RISC vendors went with when they went to > 64bit CPUs). But again, Apples to Oranges. x86_64 (we should formally call it "Intel 64", or similar, since I'm not aware of x86_64 having a formal blessing) doesn't have the fixed instruction width that you get on most RISC ISAs. Not that any of it matters when we're already creeping up the minimum memory requirements over time and not so interested in older hardware anyway (e.g. recent i586/i686 changes). I know not everyone is living in the US, but here at least someone drew my attention to a ludicrously cheap laptop on sale last weekend that also had 3GB of RAM installed. I think we should treat it like migrating to i686 and once everyone has a 64-bit capable (x86) CPU just plan to do a gradual migration over. Jon. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Le mardi 15 décembre 2009 à 16:54 +, Paul Jakma a écrit : > I personally think the model used by many Unixes from the 90s makes a > lot of sense - 32bit userpace by default, 64bit kernel, 64bit for a > select few applications that actually need the benefits of x86_64 > (memory/bit more performance), but hey.. Apples and oranges. 64bit on other arches only changes memory accesses, x86_64 changes a lot more than just that, and the other changes in x86_64 trump the memory costs. -- Nicolas Mailhot signature.asc Description: Ceci est une partie de message numériquement signée -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
> I personally think the model used by many Unixes from the 90s makes a lot of > sense - 32bit userpace by default, 64bit kernel, 64bit for a select few > applications that actually need the benefits of x86_64 (memory/bit more > performance), but hey.. Assuming this was the case and somebody decided to install (say) a 64 bit Epiphany then she will end up with two copies of the entire GNOME stack. That will come with its own storage and network costs, among other things. Running the 64-bit Epiphany will cause two copies of shared libraries to be kept in memory. Is this really worth it? Cheers, Debarshi -- One reason that life is complex is that it has a real part and an imaginary part. -- Andrew Koenig -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Chris Adams wrote: Have you actually shown any concrete benefits, or has it all just been hand-waving? Well, the benefits were already known from the introduction of 64bit systems in the mid 90s. E.g. a rule of thumb with AXP systems was that they required at least 30% odd more RAM, compared to other Unix systems (either 32bit, or 32-userspace/64kernel systems - which is what most of the other Unix RISC vendors went with when they went to 64bit CPUs). E.g., a fresh F12 install: 32bit free -m: used +/- buffers/cache at gdm: 71 logged into desktop: 123 +firefox:183 +OO writer: 203 64bit: at gdm: 113 logged in: 159 Unfortunately, I couldn't get the 64bit one past "logged in" and even then I couldn't get it to display a useful desktop (good bit of GNOME stuff was running, but nothing shown), so it's probably under-representative. That shows a 59% increase for "at GDM", and at least a 29% increase for "logged into desktop". However, to be fair, that's probably /over/-representing the difference, as I didn't do much with any applications. Pure data, like the contents of webpages, your email, etc.. doesn't contain arch-dependent variable width data like pointers. That said, attendent meta-data (e.g. mail indices, data structures for the layout of your rendered webpage, etc..) may have arch-dependent variable-width data. So I'd expect that that 60% figure would go down a bit if you really used the system. I would expect a memory increase, due to 64bit, of somewhere between 30 and 60%, depending on system - or a saving of between 23 to 38%. I can't do this test as running F12 x86-64 under Qemu is just too damn slow, even if did finish login successfully. If someone wants to replicate the above with KVM on x86_64: 1. Install F12 2. After the first boot, reboot again, to eliminate the run of 'firstboot' 3a. login via ssh 3b. login via GDM 4. start firefox 5. switch to the 2nd desktop 6. start oowriter Use the SSH session to note the memory usage with 'free -m' after steps 3b, 4 and 6. You may need to run the command a few times to wait for the usage to stabilise (it probably will spike and decrease again). For certain workloads, e.g. servers dealing in large numbers of instances of small amounts of data, 60% extra could be quite normal (or even low). It was in optimising memory usage for a BGP implementation where I personally noticed just how much bloody space those 64bit pointers can take up. ;) If somebody shows real benefits (with real data to back it up), and is willing to put forth the effort to make it work, it might be interesting. All I'm saying is that it would be nice if: a) an x86_64 kernel was made a supported option for a 32bit Fedora (it pretty much works already) - i.e. its an additional kernel. b) yum grokked out of the box how to upgrade such systems (at the moment you have to tweak some file to make it think it's a 32bit system, and then kernel updates have to be done manually) I'm saying there is at least one very reasonable and rational reason for 32-on-64. I personally think the model used by many Unixes from the 90s makes a lot of sense - 32bit userpace by default, 64bit kernel, 64bit for a select few applications that actually need the benefits of x86_64 (memory/bit more performance), but hey.. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: If you can't learn to do it well, learn to enjoy doing it badly. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 05:18:47PM +, Paul Jakma wrote: > For those who can't sort by thread in their MUA: To ask that > 32-userspace-on-64 be supported (it pretty much all works, except for > yum updating certain things, like the kernel), as there are definite > benefits to a 32-by-default userspace. There's little testing effort done on this. People still occasionally trip over bugs in the ioctl conversion code in the kernel, and there's a couple of other cases where exported ABI doesn't get converted correctly. Now, while it's undeniable that these are bugs that should be fixed, it's also pretty difficult to justify adding a third x86 variant to our list of supported configurations, especially when it's known to be more problematic than the other two that already satisfy almost everybody's needs. -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Adam Williamson wrote: On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 12:33 +, Paul Jakma wrote: You're missing the point. If I put you in front of 2 identical machines, one running 32bit and one 64bit software, would you be able to tell which one was which, from the interactive performance of common applications? I'd be willing to bet that for the vast majority of applications you wouldn't be. That's a silly argument, because it simply relies on the fact that most uses of computers aren't CPU-bound at all. In the same way I could probably steal half the RAM from your system and clock the CPU down 50% (the BOFH's favourite revenue-generating technique!) and from 'the interactive performance of common applications' you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I don't think that _means_ very much, though. It's quite meaningful, e.g. for power conservation. As you no doubt are aware of, modern system regularly clock down the CPU. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: It occurred to me lately that nothing has occurred to me lately. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, 2009-12-14 at 12:33 +, Paul Jakma wrote: > You're missing the point. > > If I put you in front of 2 identical machines, one running 32bit and > one 64bit software, would you be able to tell which one was which, > from the interactive performance of common applications? I'd be > willing to bet that for the vast majority of applications you > wouldn't be. That's a silly argument, because it simply relies on the fact that most uses of computers aren't CPU-bound at all. In the same way I could probably steal half the RAM from your system and clock the CPU down 50% (the BOFH's favourite revenue-generating technique!) and from 'the interactive performance of common applications' you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. I don't think that _means_ very much, though. -- Adam Williamson Fedora QA Community Monkey IRC: adamw | Fedora Talk: adamwill AT fedoraproject DOT org http://www.happyassassin.net -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote: Yet I could tell from the applications where performance is important. You reject my metric, I reject yours. Something of an impasse. I'm not rejecting the performance metric at all. (It's also not too hard to make firefox use more than 3GB of virtual address space, though I admit you do need to work at it a little) Only because it's obsolete. Multi-process browsers use a lot less RAM per process. What was the point of this conversation again? For those who can't sort by thread in their MUA: To ask that 32-userspace-on-64 be supported (it pretty much all works, except for yum updating certain things, like the kernel), as there are definite benefits to a 32-by-default userspace. Some people chose to argue "But you should just run 64bit completely", despite people already having described one reason to 32bit (memory usage). And from that we somehow got into a "x86_64 versus x86" thread of doom, with (IMHO) much missing of the general point. Anyway, enough. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Where do you go to get anorexia? -- Shelley Winters -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On 12/14/2009 01:56 AM, Jon Masters wrote: On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 16:19 -0600, Chris Adams wrote: Once upon a time, Jon Masters said: Indeed. Paul, take a look at the Intel 64 ISA and you'll see it's a very different beast. Intel fixed a lot of the issues with the (more than 20 year old really x86 ISA) That would be AMD that fixed it, not Intel. Intel tried to push everybody to a new architecture (Itanium), while AMD revised and extended i386 to 64 bits. After Itanium failed to catch on in the marketplace, Intel had to copy AMD's work. That's presumptuous and unfair. Sure, without AMD and others we'd likely be on Itanium (which I actually quite like as an architecture) but Intel 64 isn't just some copy-and-paste effort either. I thought Intel adopted AMD 64-bit extensions pretty much wholesale. No shame in that---they were well-designed and well engineered. We the CPU consumers should be thankful for how well this was executed by both Intel and AMD. Kudos to Intel for acting in the best interest of their customers especially since they had so much invested in Itanium, both financially and in term of company pride. While Itanium (aka Itanic :) was well-intentioned and looked good on paper, Intel/HP run into practical problems with the extent to which VLIW can be exploited by compilers, and with the hardware implementations, so that the actual performance is underwhelming. The Itanium siren song contributed to demise of SGI and wobbliness of HP so let's not be too nostalgic about it. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Paul Jakma wrote: > If I put you in front of 2 identical machines, one running 32bit > and one 64bit software, would you be able to tell which one was > which, from the interactive performance of common applications? I'd > be willing to bet that for the vast majority of applications you > wouldn't be. Yet I could tell from the applications where performance is important. You reject my metric, I reject yours. Something of an impasse. [snip] > time, when email and browser apps start to demand 4GB+, but that time is a > while away I enjoyed how in nearly one breath you claim that performance is usually irrelevant then go on to name an application where performance is quite visible: A considerable amount of page load time is browser rendering. (It's also not too hard to make firefox use more than 3GB of virtual address space, though I admit you do need to work at it a little) What was the point of this conversation again? People have demonstrated on this list, with benchmarks, that x86_64 makes a material performance improvement across a broad swath of applications where performance matters. You point out that users don't care about performance in many cases. I do not disagree but I have no clue how we can qualify or quantify that. Certainly, when some website posts benchmarks of Fedora vs other distribution those threads get a lot of discussion but that isn't really evidence. I also do not know how it is relevant, in context of x86_64, to Fedora as the use of x86_64 is effectively free. The costs, such as reduced compatibility with binary browser plugins, are simply not relevant to many people. You're obviously convinced of your opinion, other people hold the view that good performance is part of the distribution's core job. Other than the point that x86_64 also increases security (from greatly increased address space layout randomization, and reduced PIE cost), I think we've hit on every point for and against using x86_64 in this thread— yet I think not a single person has changed their initial view. I don't see how any resolution is going to come from further discussion. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Once upon a time, Paul Jakma said: > If I put you in front of 2 identical machines, one running 32bit and > one 64bit software, would you be able to tell which one was which, > from the interactive performance of common applications? I'd be > willing to bet that for the vast majority of applications you > wouldn't be. Then you might as well run the native system architecture, which is 64 bit, rather than try to figure out which apps run better as 32 bit and maintain a full duplicate set of libraries! :-) -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Le Lun 14 décembre 2009 13:31, Nicolas Mailhot a écrit : > > > > Le Lun 14 décembre 2009 12:51, Ralf Corsepius a écrit : > >> Of course, this is an extreme case, but they also aren't "that rare" in >> real world cases. > > They aren't "that rare" on very specific workloads (numeric computation). > People in those fields often have large datasets that appreciate lots of > memory (ours work with GiB-sized datasets at least) BTW, I didn't claim the overhead didn't exist, just that it was more than compensated in practice by access to more memory and architecture improvements in real world use cases (for the people who care about performance, ie people who are ready to buy a ram stick to win a few percentages in speed tests. If speed is not worth a ram stick for you given today's ridiculous ram prices you should not argue in some percentages more or less in processing times) -- Nicolas Mailhot -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Debarshi Ray wrote: Regarding shared libraries its worth noting the point about "Instruction pointer relative data access": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Architectural_features You're missing the point. If I put you in front of 2 identical machines, one running 32bit and one 64bit software, would you be able to tell which one was which, from the interactive performance of common applications? I'd be willing to bet that for the vast majority of applications you wouldn't be. The point is that few applications need to be 64bit (this may change in time, when email and browser apps start to demand 4GB+, but that time is a while away - per-process memory demands should stay flat for a while if browsers and the like switch from single-process/multi-threaded to a multi-processes model). For the few apps where it makes a difference, sure, run them as 64bit. (Also, please assume in any replies that I have a modicum of clue about the low-level technical details between i386 and x86_64). regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: magnetic interferance from money/credit cards -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Le Lun 14 décembre 2009 12:51, Ralf Corsepius a écrit : > Of course, this is an extreme case, but they also aren't "that rare" in > real world cases. They aren't "that rare" on very specific workloads (numeric computation). People in those fields often have large datasets that appreciate lots of memory (ours work with GiB-sized datasets at least) -- Nicolas Mailhot -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, 14 Dec 2009, Ralf Corsepius wrote: Of course, this is an extreme case, It isn't that extreme - pointers can make up a significant component of data-structures. E.g. any programme that has to store many instances of small amounts of data, the pointer size can have a big impact on memory usage. If the data is heavily inter-linked, even more so. Whether that's the case for most applications, I do not know however. It would though be interesting for someone to go measure this, especially in the aggregate. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: If this is timesharing, give me my share right now. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On 12/14/2009 10:27 AM, Nicolas Mailhot wrote:
Le Dim 13 décembre 2009 22:35, Chris Adams a écrit :
As for the RAM overhead of 64 bit code vs. 32 bit code, I don't see it
much in the real world.
The worst case I've seen reported is when the RAM overhead managed to
annihilate register improvements (worst case in a very specific load). So "RAM
overhead" is pretty much a urban myth on x86_64
It's not an urban myth - Conversely, it can quite easily be proven:
int main()
{
long i;
void *array[100];
for ( i = 0; i < 100; i++ ) {
array[i] = (void*) i;
};
while(1) {};
}
Compile this snippet for -m64/-m32:
# gcc -m64 -o test-64 -Wall test.c
# gcc -m32 -o test-32 -Wall test.c
Then run them and watch memory consumption (here "top"):
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEMTIME+ COMMAND
5909 corsepiu 20 0 11536 8128 248 R 100.0 0.4 0:16.93 test-64
5903 corsepiu 20 0 5560 4180 224 R 99.0 0.2 1:10.20 test-32
QED
Of course, this is an extreme case, but they also aren't "that rare" in
real world cases.
Ralf
--
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Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
> That's assuming that the footprint of libraries relative to distinct > applications is large enough to cancel out the space savings. (I have no > data either way). A 64bit kernel doesn't need any 32bit userspace. An X > server, on my 32bit system has about 8.5MB of programme text (server and > libs) and loads about another 1.5MB worth of modules itself, i.e. 10MB. Regarding shared libraries its worth noting the point about "Instruction pointer relative data access": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X86-64#Architectural_features Cheers, Debarshi -- One reason that life is complex is that it has a real part and an imaginary part. -- Andrew Koenig -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Le Dim 13 décembre 2009 22:35, Chris Adams a écrit : > As for the RAM overhead of 64 bit code vs. 32 bit code, I don't see it > much in the real world. The worst case I've seen reported is when the RAM overhead managed to annihilate register improvements (worst case in a very specific load). So "RAM overhead" is pretty much a urban myth on x86_64 -- Nicolas Mailhot -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Ralf Ertzinger wrote: > It does. There may not be a yum repo for it, but the last update was > some days ago to 10.0 r42, similar to the 32 bit version. There is an unofficial yum repo for 64-bit flash-plugin: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=205642 signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Hi. On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:35:27 -0600, Chris Adams wrote: > The only time my systems have run 32 bit code in several years is for > the Flash plugin (since the open-source plugins don't seem to be able > to keep up and since the 64 bit Adobe plugin doesn't seem to get the > security updates) It does. There may not be a yum repo for it, but the last update was some days ago to 10.0 r42, similar to the 32 bit version. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 16:19 -0600, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Jon Masters said: > > Indeed. Paul, take a look at the Intel 64 ISA and you'll see it's a very > > different beast. Intel fixed a lot of the issues with the (more than 20 > > year old really x86 ISA) > > That would be AMD that fixed it, not Intel. Intel tried to push > everybody to a new architecture (Itanium), while AMD revised and > extended i386 to 64 bits. After Itanium failed to catch on in the > marketplace, Intel had to copy AMD's work. That's presumptuous and unfair. Sure, without AMD and others we'd likely be on Itanium (which I actually quite like as an architecture) but Intel 64 isn't just some copy-and-paste effort either. Besides, whatever the history we shouldn't be encouraging people to use plain older x86. Jon. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 00:32:15 +, John5342 wrote: > > Actually i think the reason AMDs approach worked was because it was > backward compatible with ix86 so instead of having to have an OS ready > up front and people having to migrate wholesale customers could start > upgrading to x86_64 processors slowly while still using 32bit OS. Then > as 64bit OS becomes available people can use that whilst still > enjoying their favorite apps that haven't yet been ported to 64bit. In > short it was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. I think that was also needed. But I don't think they would have been able to get traction in the server market without having the prompt linux / gcc support. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 00:20, Bruno Wolff III wrote: > On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 16:19:54 -0600, > Chris Adams wrote: >> >> That would be AMD that fixed it, not Intel. Intel tried to push >> everybody to a new architecture (Itanium), while AMD revised and >> extended i386 to 64 bits. After Itanium failed to catch on in the >> marketplace, Intel had to copy AMD's work. > > I expect that has a lot to do with AMD being open source friendly. If they > had had to rely on Microsoft to get an OS to run on their machine, they > probably would have failed as well. Actually i think the reason AMDs approach worked was because it was backward compatible with ix86 so instead of having to have an OS ready up front and people having to migrate wholesale customers could start upgrading to x86_64 processors slowly while still using 32bit OS. Then as 64bit OS becomes available people can use that whilst still enjoying their favorite apps that haven't yet been ported to 64bit. In short it was evolutionary rather than revolutionary. -- There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary and those who don't... -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 16:19:54 -0600, Chris Adams wrote: > > That would be AMD that fixed it, not Intel. Intel tried to push > everybody to a new architecture (Itanium), while AMD revised and > extended i386 to 64 bits. After Itanium failed to catch on in the > marketplace, Intel had to copy AMD's work. I expect that has a lot to do with AMD being open source friendly. If they had had to rely on Microsoft to get an OS to run on their machine, they probably would have failed as well. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009, Chris Adams wrote: As soon as you bring in even one 64 bit user-space program that is run much, you've pulled in at least glibc and friends. At that point, you might as well run all (or as close to all as possible) 64 bit user-space, because the libraries are shared (code will be in the cache, etc.). That's assuming that the footprint of libraries relative to distinct applications is large enough to cancel out the space savings. (I have no data either way). A 64bit kernel doesn't need any 32bit userspace. An X server, on my 32bit system has about 8.5MB of programme text (server and libs) and loads about another 1.5MB worth of modules itself, i.e. 10MB. So if you ran a 32bit system with a 64bit kernel and X server, you'd lose out on about 10MB of shareable code. For comparison, my 32bit system has O(10) times that allocated to things like browsers and feed-readers. It's using 4.8GB in total (ex buffers/cache) apparently. Space for text (programmes, code) is simply insignificant these days, compared to the huge amounts of data which programmes allocate - data which sometimes includes a lot of pointers. You're also assuming that this cancels out the other benefits. The only time my systems have run 32 bit code in several years is for the Flash plugin (since the open-source plugins don't seem to be able to keep up and since the 64 bit Adobe plugin doesn't seem to get the security updates) and sometimes the Acrobat Reader plugin (since I've run into websites that assume they can embed PDFs in the page and AFAIK there's no plugin for Evince). It's interesting that both you and drago have "almost always" (to paraphrase) run 64bit pure systems. Surely that *reinforces* my point about the futility of "64bit pure systems" as an achievable goal (in the aggregate across all reasonable uses of a distro), and i386 being a de-facto standard for software interfaces. As for the RAM overhead of 64 bit code vs. 32 bit code, I don't see it much in the real world. I have one 32 bit desktop at work, and comparing the resident RAM usage between it and a 64 bit desktop, I don't see much difference in the common desktop programs. That's the wrong comparison - compare the aggregate RAM usage, with each system in similar states. I know that for some reason PHP on 64 bit arches bloats up significantly (at least older versions), but that's the only major difference I've seen. Pointer rich data structures, likely.. Anyway, as I don't intend to contribute anything, I'll try stop making noise. Aside to the list: Thanks for all the hard-work on Fedora ;) regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Dogs just don't seem to be able to tell the difference between important people and the rest of us. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Once upon a time, Jon Masters said: > Indeed. Paul, take a look at the Intel 64 ISA and you'll see it's a very > different beast. Intel fixed a lot of the issues with the (more than 20 > year old really x86 ISA) That would be AMD that fixed it, not Intel. Intel tried to push everybody to a new architecture (Itanium), while AMD revised and extended i386 to 64 bits. After Itanium failed to catch on in the marketplace, Intel had to copy AMD's work. -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, 2009-12-13 at 13:53 -0500, Tom Lane wrote: > Paul Jakma writes: > > On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Roland McGrath wrote: > >> x86 is unlike other architectures because 64-bit also has twice as > >> many registers as 32-bit. So you get to trade off the benefits of > >> register allocation across more registers against the memory/cache > >> footprint of 64-bit pointers. > > > For what percentage of code is that an appreciable advantage? > > Pretty much everything, actually. The x86 ISA completely sucks. Indeed. Paul, take a look at the Intel 64 ISA and you'll see it's a very different beast. Intel fixed a lot of the issues with the (more than 20 year old really x86 ISA) and it's not simply a doubling of memory footprint because variable width instructions are used in the first place, and continue to be used in the newer ISA upgrade. Personally, I think anyone running i386 on x86_64 who isn't doing some kind of testing under KVM or similar is completely wasting their computing resources and should receive a free copy of the Intel documentation for the holidays ;) Jon. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Once upon a time, Paul Jakma said: > b) The amount of code on your system that is CPU bound and/or >memory-bound due to register pressure, to an extent that the x64 >registers would make an appreciable difference is probably not >that significant > >- kernel hotpots >- graphics hotspots (X server perhaps) > >I havn't measured this, but nor have the people who say x86_64 is >faster AFAICT, and there's plenty of experience to say that most >software is far from CPU bound or memory bound. As soon as you bring in even one 64 bit user-space program that is run much, you've pulled in at least glibc and friends. At that point, you might as well run all (or as close to all as possible) 64 bit user-space, because the libraries are shared (code will be in the cache, etc.). The only time my systems have run 32 bit code in several years is for the Flash plugin (since the open-source plugins don't seem to be able to keep up and since the 64 bit Adobe plugin doesn't seem to get the security updates) and sometimes the Acrobat Reader plugin (since I've run into websites that assume they can embed PDFs in the page and AFAIK there's no plugin for Evince). Since both cases are not all that common in my every-day use, I don't hit the 32 bit libraries and such very often. Running a single-arch and single-lib system is more efficient. As for the RAM overhead of 64 bit code vs. 32 bit code, I don't see it much in the real world. I have one 32 bit desktop at work, and comparing the resident RAM usage between it and a 64 bit desktop, I don't see much difference in the common desktop programs. I know that for some reason PHP on 64 bit arches bloats up significantly (at least older versions), but that's the only major difference I've seen. -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 9:09 PM, drago01 wrote: >> c) There is a definite cost to a distro in having to maintain 2 >> x86_64 and i386 as separate arches > > Not a reason to move forward with hardware development. reason to _not_ move ... > Er.. don't quite get your point here, what is stopping me from running > i686 VMs on a x86_64 host? > I have been doing this for a while and there are there problems (you > don't even need multilib for that) should read _zero_ problems. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 8:16 PM, Paul Jakma wrote: > On Sun, 13 Dec 2009, drago01 wrote: > >> such a setup does not make much sense, when your hardware supports x86_64 >> not using it for userspace is a waste > > a) i386 has a lower memory footprint, as has been mentioned in this > thread. Yes which is pretty much the only valid complaint but trading memory for performance is a price I am willing to take ... > b) The amount of code on your system that is CPU bound and/or > memory-bound due to register pressure, to an extent that the x64 > registers would make an appreciable difference is probably not > that significant > > - kernel hotpots The kernel doesn't do any have computing... > - graphics hotspots (X server perhaps) > > I havn't measured this, but nor have the people who say x86_64 is > faster AFAICT, and there's plenty of experience to say that most > software is far from CPU bound or memory bound. Yes but the stuff adds up, you gain almost nothing by running i686 code but where it matters x86_64 can make a HUGE difference. > c) There is a definite cost to a distro in having to maintain 2 > x86_64 and i386 as separate arches Not a reason to move forward with hardware development. > > d) Like or not, i386 is the de-facto standard for binary interfaces: > > - Netscape plugins This is slowly being fixed. > - Windows executables Nobody stops you from running i386 apps on a x86_64 system. > - VM images to run in, say, QEMU/KVM > - Sandboxing technologies for, say, browser plugins (I think > Google have stuff in this area) > - Free software windows-only apps (don't know if they exist) > > All the code here can be open-source/free-software and still be > relying on i386 as a widely known and hence convenient > /interface/. As such, it likely needs to be supported on x86_64 > kernel-based systems anyway, as performantly as possible. (And > yeah, I gather KVM x86_64 doesn't work for i386 VMs - annoying). Er.. don't quite get your point here, what is stopping me from running i686 VMs on a x86_64 host? I have been doing this for a while and there are there problems (you don't even need multilib for that) > So personally I think x86_64-pure is unrealistic and, independently, I think > 32-on-64 makes sense, but hey. :) I did not suggest using pure x86_64 but using x86_64 where we can (ie. not just the kernel). -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009, Paul Jakma wrote: b) The amount of code on your system that is CPU bound and/or memory-bound due to register pressure, to an extent that the x64 faster AFAICT, and there's plenty of experience to say that most software is far from CPU bound or memory bound. Oops, this is unclear - "memory bound" here in these 2 cases refers to memory-I/O, not amount of memory. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Plus ,ca change, plus c'est la m^eme chose. [The more things change, the more they remain the same.] -- Alphonse Karr, "Les Gu^epes" -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
> if _you_ want to support slower machines ... _you_ will have to do the work, > you might get help from the community but just ranting on f-d-l "Everyone > should solve my problems" is unlikely to actually help. IMO. I would if I could. I can't program. Else I would just shutup and would DO the work! So the only thing I can do is "babel". Alternative I can just sit there and see how the things become worse.. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
>> Fedora has already chosen to make the 32bit builds incompatible with pre-686 >> systems for performance gains > Yes, a decision I consider to be a Fedora managment mistake. > Seems to me, as if some people in Fedora's leadership don't want to > understand that being able to deploy Linux on "old" or "recycled" hardware > used to be one big selling point in Linux. > Certainly, Fedora devs tend to be equipped with modern HW, but it's a mistake > to believe everybody is. >> I think if your position is that most users don't care about performance and >> other things (like compatibility) are more important then you should >> strongly promote x86_64 Fedora for everyone who can use it. > Not quite. My position actually is: Most users don't care much about 1-2% > improved performance nor about improved internals (more registers etc.), as > long as "their system" does what they want it to do. > That said, these users don't actually care about using 64bit or 32bit Linux, > as long as "their applications" behave "reasonable" and as long as the OS is > easy to use. > Or differently: I don't need a car with a 250kw engine and 7 seats to drive > to the supermarket. My 8-years of VW Polo with its 50kW engine will also do ;) I totally agree with you. :) -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, 13 Dec 2009, drago01 wrote: such a setup does not make much sense, when your hardware supports x86_64 not using it for userspace is a waste a) i386 has a lower memory footprint, as has been mentioned in this thread. b) The amount of code on your system that is CPU bound and/or memory-bound due to register pressure, to an extent that the x64 registers would make an appreciable difference is probably not that significant - kernel hotpots - graphics hotspots (X server perhaps) I havn't measured this, but nor have the people who say x86_64 is faster AFAICT, and there's plenty of experience to say that most software is far from CPU bound or memory bound. c) There is a definite cost to a distro in having to maintain 2 x86_64 and i386 as separate arches - QA - package building and distribution Every supported arch increases the size of the test matrix. Minimising the number of arches you have to, say, test a "cp" bugfix against helps reduce QA load and helps you get better software to your users, faster (better cause you release time spent on architecture QA that can be spent on improving software generally). d) Like or not, i386 is the de-facto standard for binary interfaces: - Netscape plugins - Windows executables The retort no doubt will "Oh but this is Fedora, we don't care about any closed-source stuff", but that would miss the point entirely re *Interface*. The i386 machine can be a plugin interface between 2 different open-source systems, e.g. consider: - VM images to run in, say, QEMU/KVM - Sandboxing technologies for, say, browser plugins (I think Google have stuff in this area) - Free software windows-only apps (don't know if they exist) All the code here can be open-source/free-software and still be relying on i386 as a widely known and hence convenient /interface/. As such, it likely needs to be supported on x86_64 kernel-based systems anyway, as performantly as possible. (And yeah, I gather KVM x86_64 doesn't work for i386 VMs - annoying). So personally I think x86_64-pure is unrealistic and, independently, I think 32-on-64 makes sense, but hey. :) regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: He who despises himself nevertheless esteems himself as a self-despiser. -- Friedrich Nietzsche -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
Paul Jakma writes: > On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Roland McGrath wrote: >> x86 is unlike other architectures because 64-bit also has twice as >> many registers as 32-bit. So you get to trade off the benefits of >> register allocation across more registers against the memory/cache >> footprint of 64-bit pointers. > For what percentage of code is that an appreciable advantage? Pretty much everything, actually. The x86 ISA completely sucks. regards, tom lane -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Sun, Dec 13, 2009 at 7:33 PM, Paul Jakma wrote: > On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Jeff Garzik wrote: > >> Running a 64-bit kernel with a 32-bit userland is a common practice on >> non-x86 platforms, and non-Linux OS's. > > FWIW, it works on Linux too. I ran F10 i386 on a x86_64 kernel for a while. > About the only thing that doesn't work right is yum wrt kernel updates. > >> For a lot of tasks, you simply do not need 64-bit pointers and a 64-bit >> process address space. Both executable code and in-memory data structures >> tend to be smaller on 32-bit. > > Indeed. > > It would be nice if i386-userspace/x64-kernel were officially support.. such a setup does not make much sense, when your hardware supports x86_64 not using it for userspace is a waste -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Roland McGrath wrote: x86 is unlike other architectures because 64-bit also has twice as many registers as 32-bit. So you get to trade off the benefits of register allocation across more registers against the memory/cache footprint of 64-bit pointers. For what percentage of code is that an appreciable advantage? regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: QOTD: "If he learns from his mistakes, pretty soon he'll know everything." -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: x86-64 on i386 (was Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?)
On Wed, 18 Nov 2009, Jeff Garzik wrote: Running a 64-bit kernel with a 32-bit userland is a common practice on non-x86 platforms, and non-Linux OS's. FWIW, it works on Linux too. I ran F10 i386 on a x86_64 kernel for a while. About the only thing that doesn't work right is yum wrt kernel updates. For a lot of tasks, you simply do not need 64-bit pointers and a 64-bit process address space. Both executable code and in-memory data structures tend to be smaller on 32-bit. Indeed. It would be nice if i386-userspace/x64-kernel were officially support.. regards, -- Paul Jakma p...@jakma.org Key ID: 64A2FF6A Fortune: Blore's Razor: Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 12:20:28PM +0100, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote: > On Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 22:11, Kevin Kofler wrote: > > Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote: > > > Actually, x86_64 is an AMD invention (originally called AMD64) > > > and is called EM64T by Intel. The only "Intel 64" I can think of > > > is IA64, i.e. Itanium (called "Itanic" by some). > > > > EM64T was renamed to Intel 64 eons ago. > > Call me a dinosaur, then. ;) > I stand corrected. > Easy mistake to make considering it started as CT, then was IA-32e, then EM64T, and finally Intel 64. All of them refer to the same thing at some point. Justin -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wednesday, 09 December 2009 at 22:11, Kevin Kofler wrote: > Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote: > > Actually, x86_64 is an AMD invention (originally called AMD64) > > and is called EM64T by Intel. The only "Intel 64" I can think of > > is IA64, i.e. Itanium (called "Itanic" by some). > > EM64T was renamed to Intel 64 eons ago. Call me a dinosaur, then. ;) I stand corrected. Regards, R. -- Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org | MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu "Faith manages." -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations" -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Gregory Maxwell wrote: On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Seth Vidal wrote: and then you have to do that as well for updates. :( Not if you don't have a separate updates repo, no? still need an updates-testing. -sv -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 4:51 PM, Seth Vidal wrote: > and then you have to do that as well for updates. :( Not if you don't have a separate updates repo, no? -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Chris Adams wrote: Once upon a time, Ville Skyttä said: Yeah, I've done that in some setups but I was talking about purifying the _repos_ above; that setting doesn't affect them, e.g. it doesn't make the metadata to be downloaded any smaller. (As said, not that I think it's a big general issue at all, but just that I'd personally have nothing against if it would be "fixed" nevertheless.) One way to make this smaller (without any overlap) would be to split the current two (i386 and x86_64) repos into three: i386-common, i386, x86_64. For an i386 system, you use i386 and i386-common, for a multilib x86_64 system you use x86_64 and i386-common, and for a pure x86_64 system you use just x86_64. I don't know if it is worth the trouble though. and then you have to do that as well for updates. :( -sv -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Once upon a time, Ville Skyttä said: > Yeah, I've done that in some setups but I was talking about purifying the > _repos_ above; that setting doesn't affect them, e.g. it doesn't make the > metadata to be downloaded any smaller. (As said, not that I think it's a big > general issue at all, but just that I'd personally have nothing against if it > would be "fixed" nevertheless.) One way to make this smaller (without any overlap) would be to split the current two (i386 and x86_64) repos into three: i386-common, i386, x86_64. For an i386 system, you use i386 and i386-common, for a multilib x86_64 system you use x86_64 and i386-common, and for a pure x86_64 system you use just x86_64. I don't know if it is worth the trouble though. -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Le mercredi 09 décembre 2009 à 14:30 -0500, Seth Vidal a écrit : > > if you want to purify x86_64 you can always add: > > exclude=*.i[3456]86 > > to your yum.conf under [main] However, it would be nice if a pure x86_64 index was generated somewhere for people who run pure 64 bit systems and do not want to download 32 bit metadata all year round just to exclude it localy -- Nicolas Mailhot signature.asc Description: Ceci est une partie de message numériquement signée -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote: > Actually, x86_64 is an AMD invention (originally called AMD64) > and is called EM64T by Intel. The only "Intel 64" I can think of > is IA64, i.e. Itanium (called "Itanic" by some). EM64T was renamed to Intel 64 eons ago. Kevin Kofler -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Ville Skyttä wrote: > Yeah, I've done that in some setups but I was talking about purifying the > _repos_ above; that setting doesn't affect them, e.g. it doesn't make the > metadata to be downloaded any smaller. (As said, not that I think it's a > big general issue at all, but just that I'd personally have nothing > against if it would be "fixed" nevertheless.) Kicking out multilibs from the repos might also make it much faster to compose updates repositories. A lot of time is wasted computing multilibs now. Kevin Kofler -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 10:03 PM, Kevin Kofler wrote: > John Reiser wrote: >> Sometimes I doubt even that, particularly when shipped software >> has python syntax errors (type mismatch, wrong number of arguments, >> no such member, ...) > > The joys of interpreted languages… In a compiled language, such an > error would just fail the build. where a sightly different error can lead to a segault or even a exploitable security hole (or in short every language has it pros and cons) -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
John Reiser wrote: > Sometimes I doubt even that, particularly when shipped software > has python syntax errors (type mismatch, wrong number of arguments, > no such member, ...) The joys of interpreted languages… In a compiled language, such an error would just fail the build. Kevin Kofler -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wednesday 09 December 2009, Seth Vidal wrote: > On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Ville Skyttä wrote: > > > But I'd have nothing against "purifying" x86_64 repos and instructing > > people who need something from ix86 repos to enable them as well. I > > suppose this is something PackageKit could even suggest on demand. > > Anyway I also suppose that if it was this simple, it would have been done > > already. > > if you want to purify x86_64 you can always add: > > exclude=*.i[3456]86 > > to your yum.conf under [main] Yeah, I've done that in some setups but I was talking about purifying the _repos_ above; that setting doesn't affect them, e.g. it doesn't make the metadata to be downloaded any smaller. (As said, not that I think it's a big general issue at all, but just that I'd personally have nothing against if it would be "fixed" nevertheless.) -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Ville Skyttä wrote: On Wednesday 09 December 2009, Ralf Corsepius wrote: On 12/08/2009 09:26 PM, Ville Skyttä wrote: These probably aren't things to be generally overly concerned about though, ... try a yum update over GSM or over a modem and you'll very soon experience what I am talking about. Been there, done that occasionally. Scenarios like that just don't happen to be part of what I meant by "generally". But I'd have nothing against "purifying" x86_64 repos and instructing people who need something from ix86 repos to enable them as well. I suppose this is something PackageKit could even suggest on demand. Anyway I also suppose that if it was this simple, it would have been done already. if you want to purify x86_64 you can always add: exclude=*.i[3456]86 to your yum.conf under [main] -sv -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wednesday 09 December 2009, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > On 12/08/2009 09:26 PM, Ville Skyttä wrote: > > These probably aren't things to be generally overly concerned > > about though, > > ... try a yum update over GSM or over a modem and you'll very soon > experience what I am talking about. Been there, done that occasionally. Scenarios like that just don't happen to be part of what I meant by "generally". But I'd have nothing against "purifying" x86_64 repos and instructing people who need something from ix86 repos to enable them as well. I suppose this is something PackageKit could even suggest on demand. Anyway I also suppose that if it was this simple, it would have been done already. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/09/2009 05:51 PM, Seth Vidal wrote: On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Ralf Corsepius wrote: On 12/09/2009 04:14 PM, James Antill wrote: On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 15:26 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: So, yeh, if _you_ want to support slower machines Well, I do not want to, I can't avoid to ... ... _you_ will have to do the work, you might get help from the community but just ranting on f-d-l "Everyone should solve my problems" is unlikely to actually help. IMO. There is an easier solution: Stop using/promoting/advertising Fedora and switch to a different distro ... okay, for you, that sounds like it may be the best option. You are obviously unhappy with fedora. Did I say this? I am unhappy with Fedora's management's decisions. Technically, Fedora is quite usable (most of the time), on more or modern machines. We've appreciated your constructive contributions but if you are no longer interested in working on/with fedora, then we wish you well in your endeavors. If I wasn't interested in Fedora, I wouldn't complain. It's just that Fedora increasingly diverges from my needs and increasingly is not applicable for my purposes. Less abstract: This development forces me to not recommend Fedora (or RHEL) to customers. It would be most polite to officially orphan your packages before you go. Thanks you for sheding more insights in how you intend to take community interests into account. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/09/2009 10:17 PM, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > On 12/09/2009 04:14 PM, James Antill wrote: >> On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 15:26 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > >> So, yeh, if _you_ want to support slower machines > Well, I do not want to, I can't avoid to ... > >> ... _you_ will have >> to do the work, you might get help from the community but just ranting >> on f-d-l "Everyone should solve my problems" is unlikely to actually >> help. IMO. > > There is an easier solution: Stop using/promoting/advertising Fedora and > switch to a different distro ... Absolutely. Fedora can't be everything to everybody. If noone is willing to do the work involved, try and find the tools to do the job better. Just ranting isn't useful. Rahul -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, 9 Dec 2009, Ralf Corsepius wrote: On 12/09/2009 04:14 PM, James Antill wrote: On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 15:26 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: So, yeh, if _you_ want to support slower machines Well, I do not want to, I can't avoid to ... ... _you_ will have to do the work, you might get help from the community but just ranting on f-d-l "Everyone should solve my problems" is unlikely to actually help. IMO. There is an easier solution: Stop using/promoting/advertising Fedora and switch to a different distro ... okay, for you, that sounds like it may be the best option. You are obviously unhappy with fedora. We've appreciated your constructive contributions but if you are no longer interested in working on/with fedora, then we wish you well in your endeavors. It would be most polite to officially orphan your packages before you go. Thanks and good luck in the future. -sv -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/09/2009 04:14 PM, James Antill wrote: On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 15:26 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: So, yeh, if _you_ want to support slower machines Well, I do not want to, I can't avoid to ... ... _you_ will have to do the work, you might get help from the community but just ranting on f-d-l "Everyone should solve my problems" is unlikely to actually help. IMO. There is an easier solution: Stop using/promoting/advertising Fedora and switch to a different distro ... Ralf -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/09/2009 07:14 AM, James Antill wrote: ... The minimum RAM size on any of these 5 boxes is 2GB. I'd be surprised to find that anyone working as a full time developer has any (non-virt) boxes that are spec'd less than that. Surprise! I have 4 boxes that are 1GB or less (as low as 320MB), and several that are 2GB or more. And yes, shockingly, developers will test on the machines they have easy access to. Sometimes I doubt even that, particularly when shipped software has python syntax errors (type mismatch, wrong number of arguments, no such member, ...) -- -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 10:14:10 -0500, James Antill wrote: > > So, yeh, if _you_ want to support slower machines ... _you_ will have > to do the work, you might get help from the community but just ranting > on f-d-l "Everyone should solve my problems" is unlikely to actually > help. IMO. I think the question is more about supporting machines with less memory and processors that don't support all of the 686 instructions. I have a couple of old laptops that I use at a gaming convention once a year that have pentium 90s with 24MB of memory. I have redhat 6.2 on them, but would have liked to have tried using Fedora on at least one of them. But I wouldn't be able to use anaconda to do the install and I might need to build a custom kernel to cut the memory needed down a bit. But I'll probably just leave them as is and in a few years find some other old hand me down laptop to replace them. I also have a couple of low end routers that currently have ddwrt images on them. When openwrt has 2.6 kernel broadcom support, I plan to switch over to openwrt. But it would be cool to be able to run a Fedora based router spin on them if such a thing existed. (Not cool enough for me to do the development, as I have other things I want done more.) -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, 2009-12-09 at 15:26 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > However, some $DEITY's have decided otherwise ... > > I am inclined to think "inevitably, because such platforms aren't the > platforms most developers use nor the platforms "RHEL is aiming at" ... > These people think in terms of "Quad machines" and "RH clients", but > forget about the amount of "old" machines which are still actively being > used and about "use-case niches". A+ for, eventually, coming to the obvious solution. Although, personally, I haven't had a quad core yet all the computers I currently have running are either laptops or dual cores. The minimum RAM size on any of these 5 boxes is 2GB. I'd be surprised to find that anyone working as a full time developer has any (non-virt) boxes that are spec'd less than that. And yes, shockingly, developers will test on the machines they have easy access to. So, yeh, if _you_ want to support slower machines ... _you_ will have to do the work, you might get help from the community but just ranting on f-d-l "Everyone should solve my problems" is unlikely to actually help. IMO. -- James Antill - ja...@fedoraproject.org http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/releases http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/whatsnew/3.2.25 http://yum.baseurl.org/wiki/YumMultipleMachineCaching -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 03:00:51PM +0100, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski wrote: > Actually, x86_64 is an AMD invention (originally called AMD64) > and is called EM64T by Intel. The only "Intel 64" I can think of > is IA64, i.e. Itanium (called "Itanic" by some). http://www.intel.com/technology/intel64/ We have always been at war with Itanium, -- Matthew Garrett | mj...@srcf.ucam.org -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Le Mer 9 décembre 2009 15:00, Dominik 'Rathann' Mierzejewski a écrit : > Actually, x86_64 is an AMD invention (originally called AMD64) > and is called EM64T by Intel. The only "Intel 64" I can think of > is IA64, i.e. Itanium (called "Itanic" by some). When Intel realised Itanium was a failure, they dumped the ia32/ia64 classification and adopted x32/x64 (which is the same thing, except x64 != ia64, talk about hiding past mistakes) -- Nicolas Mailhot -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/09/2009 02:05 PM, Bruno Wolff III wrote: On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 06:51:59 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: Seems to me, as if some people in Fedora's leadership don't want to understand that being able to deploy Linux on "old" or "recycled" hardware used to be one big selling point in Linux. I think the question is really, is Fedora suitable for being deployed on older hardware? In its early days, it was. Currently it isn't (for some value of older). Ageed, it isn't anymore. As I feel, "Fedora has followed up Microsoft the Vista way" Those using modern hardware may find this "cool", those who don't, switch away to using different distros. I think if people wanted to try and make this happen, it could happen. It wasn't a lot of work in the early Fedora day - It simply worked out of the box! However, some $DEITY's have decided otherwise ... I am inclined to think "inevitably, because such platforms aren't the platforms most developers use nor the platforms "RHEL is aiming at" ... These people think in terms of "Quad machines" and "RH clients", but forget about the amount of "old" machines which are still actively being used and about "use-case niches". Ralf -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Tuesday, 08 December 2009 at 20:07, Jon Masters wrote: > On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 18:41 +0100, drago01 wrote: > > On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Rallias UberNerd > > > > But wouldn't it be better to use 32 bit when less then 4 GB of ram is > > > present? > > > > no, using x86_64 means more registers, sse2 as default floating point > > instruction set, better calling convention (register passing vs. > > stack) or in other words in most cases faster code. > > Indeed. Intel 64 (x86_64) is really a different animal. More registers, Actually, x86_64 is an AMD invention (originally called AMD64) and is called EM64T by Intel. The only "Intel 64" I can think of is IA64, i.e. Itanium (called "Itanic" by some). Regards, R. -- Fedora http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/User:Rathann RPMFusion http://rpmfusion.org | MPlayer http://mplayerhq.hu "Faith manages." -- Delenn to Lennier in Babylon 5:"Confessions and Lamentations" -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Wed, Dec 09, 2009 at 06:51:59 +0100, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > Seems to me, as if some people in Fedora's leadership don't want to > understand that being able to deploy Linux on "old" or "recycled" > hardware used to be one big selling point in Linux. I think the question is really, is Fedora suitable for being deployed on older hardware? Currently it isn't (for some value of older). I think if people wanted to try and make this happen, it could happen. But it would be a lot of work and might be different enough that it couldn't use the Fedora brand. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/08/2009 08:02 PM, Gregory Maxwell wrote: On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Ralf Corsepius wrote: That's one side, the other side is: * Larger demands on RAM (x86_64 is more demanding on memory requirements). Even if it were a full doubling (which is the absolute worst case possible), it would only be pushing the effective cost of memory back roughly 18 months or so. In reality the increase should be much less than 2x. Correct - I didn't say "twice", I only said "more". On systems with smaller memory (or with soldered memory) this "more" can be the "drop" which may be responsible for exceeding memory demands to beyond physical memory and be the cause of swapping. * More packages (rpms) to cope with. Hmm? I'm not sure what you're talking about there. multilibs. x86_64 means coping with more packages in an installation (ca. 1/3 more). This has an impact on maintenance complexity (parallel installation of i386 packages), on metadata sizes (yum bandwith demands), etc. * The "faster" is hardly sensible to ordinary users. You could equally say that the difference in memory consumption is not relevant to most ordinary users. No. At the very point a system starts swapping, memory consumption will become sensible. Fedora has already chosen to make the 32bit builds incompatible with pre-686 systems for performance gains Yes, a decision I consider to be a Fedora managment mistake. Seems to me, as if some people in Fedora's leadership don't want to understand that being able to deploy Linux on "old" or "recycled" hardware used to be one big selling point in Linux. Certainly, Fedora devs tend to be equipped with modern HW, but it's a mistake to believe everybody is. I think if your position is that most users don't care about performance and other things (like compatibility) are more important then you should strongly promote x86_64 Fedora for everyone who can use it. Not quite. My position actually is: Most users don't care much about 1-2% improved performance nor about improved internals (more registers etc.), as long as "their system" does what they want it to do. That said, these users don't actually care about using 64bit or 32bit Linux, as long as "their applications" behave "reasonable" and as long as the OS is easy to use. Or differently: I don't need a car with a 250kw engine and 7 seats to drive to the supermarket. My 8-years of VW Polo with its 50kW engine will also do ;) Ralf -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/08/2009 09:26 PM, Ville Skyttä wrote: On Tuesday 08 December 2009, Kevin Kofler wrote: Ralf Corsepius wrote: * More packages (rpms) to cope with. Only if you pollute your system with 32-bit multilibs. A pure x86_64 system doesn't have any more packages than a 32-bit one. Fedora x86_64 repos do however carry ix86 packages around which shows in metadata sizes and I guess to some extent in performance of some yum operations. and in ... ... bandwidth demands ... ... package dep conflicts resolution ... ... maintenance efforts (At the very point you have one true 32bit-only capable machine around, installing x86_64 on a single machine means duplicating the maintenance effort). These probably aren't things to be generally overly concerned about though, ... try a yum update over GSM or over a modem and you'll very soon experience what I am talking about. and maybe not even what Ralf meant (he specifically mentioned rpms). I was indirectly referring to this (c.f. another thread on this list earlier this week). Ralf -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Kevin Kofler wrote: Ralf Corsepius wrote: * More packages (rpms) to cope with. Only if you pollute your system with 32-bit multilibs. A pure x86_64 system doesn't have any more packages than a 32-bit one. We don't even install multilibs by default anymore. Kevin Kofler 32-bit multilibs seems hard to avoid if you want to run wine. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Tuesday 08 December 2009, Kevin Kofler wrote: > Ralf Corsepius wrote: > > * More packages (rpms) to cope with. > > Only if you pollute your system with 32-bit multilibs. A pure x86_64 system > doesn't have any more packages than a 32-bit one. Fedora x86_64 repos do however carry ix86 packages around which shows in metadata sizes and I guess to some extent in performance of some yum operations. These probably aren't things to be generally overly concerned about though, and maybe not even what Ralf meant (he specifically mentioned rpms). -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Ralf Corsepius wrote: > * More packages (rpms) to cope with. Only if you pollute your system with 32-bit multilibs. A pure x86_64 system doesn't have any more packages than a 32-bit one. We don't even install multilibs by default anymore. Kevin Kofler -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Tue, 2009-12-08 at 18:41 +0100, drago01 wrote: > On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Rallias UberNerd > > But wouldn't it be better to use 32 bit when less then 4 GB of ram is > > present? > > no, using x86_64 means more registers, sse2 as default floating point > instruction set, better calling convention (register passing vs. > stack) or in other words in most cases faster code. Indeed. Intel 64 (x86_64) is really a different animal. More registers, different behaviors, and not just an LP64 version of what was there before. I've spent the last few weeks finally reading the x86_64 docs on my Kindle and really look forward to the older stuff just dying. Jon. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 12:47 PM, Ralf Corsepius wrote: > That's one side, the other side is: > * Larger demands on RAM (x86_64 is more demanding on memory > requirements). Even if it were a full doubling (which is the absolute worst case possible), it would only be pushing the effective cost of memory back roughly 18 months or so. In reality the increase should be much less than 2x. > * More packages (rpms) to cope with. Hmm? I'm not sure what you're talking about there. It's completely reasonable to run an exclusively x86_64 system. I don't see why it implies any more packages. > * The "faster" is hardly sensible to ordinary users. You could equally say that the difference in memory consumption is not relevant to most ordinary users. Performance matters to everyone at least sometimes, but memory is only a big issue when you don't have enough. I think very few people running fedora are all that low on memory. Fedora has already chosen to make the 32bit builds incompatible with pre-686 systems for performance gains much smaller than you typically get from x86_64 vs x86, so it seems that some people think that performance is pretty important. Even the most undemanding users care about performance in at least some areas, for example on any given hardware x86_64 libtheora can play larger videos than 32-bit. On some hardware x86_64 vs 32bit is the difference between good and bad 1080p playback. I think if your position is that most users don't care about performance and other things (like compatibility) are more important then you should strongly promote x86_64 Fedora for everyone who can use it. If x86_64 fedora is widely used by those who can there will be less pressure to put leading-edge but less compatible features into the 32bit fedora build. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 12/08/2009 06:41 PM, drago01 wrote: On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Rallias UberNerd wrote: On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:39:16 -0600, Kevin Kofler wrote: Bill McGonigle wrote: "Are you installing Fedora on the computer you're using now?" [YES] [NO] YES -> is any sort of check even possible if the user is running 32-bit on 64-bit? Yes, if the CPU has the lm (long mode) flag, it's a 64-bit-capable CPU and using the 32-bit version is suboptimal. Kevin Kofler But wouldn't it be better to use 32 bit when less then 4 GB of ram is present? no, using x86_64 means more registers, sse2 as default floating point instruction set, better calling convention (register passing vs. stack) or in other words in most cases faster code. That's one side, the other side is: * Larger demands on RAM (x86_64 is more demanding on memory requirements). * More packages (rpms) to cope with. * The "faster" is hardly sensible to ordinary users. Ralf -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 5:27 PM, Rallias UberNerd wrote: > On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:39:16 -0600, Kevin Kofler > wrote: > >> Bill McGonigle wrote: >>> >>> "Are you installing Fedora on the computer you're using now?" [YES] [NO] >>> YES -> is any sort of check even possible if the user is running >>> 32-bit on 64-bit? >> >> Yes, if the CPU has the lm (long mode) flag, it's a 64-bit-capable CPU and >> using the 32-bit version is suboptimal. >> >> Kevin Kofler >> > But wouldn't it be better to use 32 bit when less then 4 GB of ram is > present? no, using x86_64 means more registers, sse2 as default floating point instruction set, better calling convention (register passing vs. stack) or in other words in most cases faster code. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:39:16 -0600, Kevin Kofler wrote: Bill McGonigle wrote: "Are you installing Fedora on the computer you're using now?" [YES] [NO] YES -> is any sort of check even possible if the user is running 32-bit on 64-bit? Yes, if the CPU has the lm (long mode) flag, it's a 64-bit-capable CPU and using the 32-bit version is suboptimal. Kevin Kofler But wouldn't it be better to use 32 bit when less then 4 GB of ram is present? -- Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/ -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 11/19/2009 05:28 PM, Ralf Ertzinger wrote: Not necessarily relevant, but a win for Linux (Microsoft never figured out how to make this work :). Rather MS did no longer want to take the blame for driver authors who did not anticipate that more than 4GB RAM in a 32 bit system and decided to cut rather than fight. The 32 bit server versions (which need approved drivers) have no trouble with more RAM. That is the charitable explanation---more cynical analysis points out that the functionality is there, but is disabled by a licensing check: http://www.geoffchappell.com/viewer.htm?doc=notes/windows/license/memory.htm przemek klosowski -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 10:51 AM, drago01 wrote: > On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Sir Gallantmon wrote: >> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: >>> >>> On Sun, 2009-11-22 at 00:52 -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote: >>> > On 11/21/2009 03:52 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: >>> > > FWIW, there is a syslinux module named ifcpu64 that will load >>> > > different >>> > > kernels/initrds based on whether the cpu is 64-bit. >>> > >>> > Cool, do syslinux modules work in isolinux? We could have a tiny 32-bit >>> > image on a 64-bit CD that would say, "sorry, you got the wrong CD". >>> >>> They should; it's all the same project. I think the the 64-bit kernel >>> already gives a sane error message when you attempt to run it on a >>> 32-bit machine. >>> >>> Jonathan >>> >> >> I wonder... Why can't we have 32-bit Linux able to run 64-bit applications? >> Mac OS X can do it. > > 1) because it isn't possible > 2) no it doesn't mac OS X use a 64bit hypervisor and run the rest inside it. An more importantly ... why should we want that? -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 9:15 AM, Sir Gallantmon wrote: > On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: >> >> On Sun, 2009-11-22 at 00:52 -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote: >> > On 11/21/2009 03:52 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: >> > > FWIW, there is a syslinux module named ifcpu64 that will load >> > > different >> > > kernels/initrds based on whether the cpu is 64-bit. >> > >> > Cool, do syslinux modules work in isolinux? We could have a tiny 32-bit >> > image on a 64-bit CD that would say, "sorry, you got the wrong CD". >> >> They should; it's all the same project. I think the the 64-bit kernel >> already gives a sane error message when you attempt to run it on a >> 32-bit machine. >> >> Jonathan >> > > I wonder... Why can't we have 32-bit Linux able to run 64-bit applications? > Mac OS X can do it. 1) because it isn't possible 2) no it doesn't mac OS X use a 64bit hypervisor and run the rest inside it. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 1:35 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: > On Sun, 2009-11-22 at 00:52 -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote: > > On 11/21/2009 03:52 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: > > > FWIW, there is a syslinux module named ifcpu64 that will load different > > > kernels/initrds based on whether the cpu is 64-bit. > > > > Cool, do syslinux modules work in isolinux? We could have a tiny 32-bit > > image on a 64-bit CD that would say, "sorry, you got the wrong CD". > > They should; it's all the same project. I think the the 64-bit kernel > already gives a sane error message when you attempt to run it on a > 32-bit machine. > > Jonathan > > I wonder... Why can't we have 32-bit Linux able to run 64-bit applications? Mac OS X can do it. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Sun, 2009-11-22 at 00:52 -0500, Bill McGonigle wrote: > On 11/21/2009 03:52 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: > > FWIW, there is a syslinux module named ifcpu64 that will load different > > kernels/initrds based on whether the cpu is 64-bit. > > Cool, do syslinux modules work in isolinux? We could have a tiny 32-bit > image on a 64-bit CD that would say, "sorry, you got the wrong CD". They should; it's all the same project. I think the the 64-bit kernel already gives a sane error message when you attempt to run it on a 32-bit machine. Jonathan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On 11/21/2009 03:52 AM, Jonathan Dieter wrote: > FWIW, there is a syslinux module named ifcpu64 that will load different > kernels/initrds based on whether the cpu is 64-bit. Cool, do syslinux modules work in isolinux? We could have a tiny 32-bit image on a 64-bit CD that would say, "sorry, you got the wrong CD". -Bill -- Bill McGonigle, Owner BFC Computing, LLC http://bfccomputing.com/ Telephone: +1.603.448.4440 Email, IM, VOIP: b...@bfccomputing.com VCard: http://bfccomputing.com/vcard/bill.vcf Social networks: bill_mcgonigle/bill.mcgonigle -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
On Fri, 2009-11-20 at 20:02 -0600, Chris Adams wrote: > Once upon a time, Kevin Kofler said: > > 1. Needs GRUB hackery to support transparently. (For the DVD, Anaconda can > > detect the architecture and install a kernel accordingly, but for a live > > CD, > > we don't have any such support.) > > That would be SYSLINUX hackery, not GRUB hackery. The CD and DVD images > use ISOLINUX to boot. SYSLINUX has a module interface; I don't know if > it could handle a quick check for the "lm" CPU capability and choose a > different menu file or not. FWIW, there is a syslinux module named ifcpu64 that will load different kernels/initrds based on whether the cpu is 64-bit. I use it in pxelinux at our school so our 64-bit Fedora image automatically gets installed on the systems that can support it, while our 32-bit Fedora image gets installed on the rest. Jonathan signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Once upon a time, Kevin Kofler said: > 1. Needs GRUB hackery to support transparently. (For the DVD, Anaconda can > detect the architecture and install a kernel accordingly, but for a live CD, > we don't have any such support.) That would be SYSLINUX hackery, not GRUB hackery. The CD and DVD images use ISOLINUX to boot. SYSLINUX has a module interface; I don't know if it could handle a quick check for the "lm" CPU capability and choose a different menu file or not. This obviously doesn't address CD space or other issues; just pointing out the boot loader piece could be relatively easy. -- Chris Adams Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
Re: Promoting i386 version over x86_64?
Benny Amorsen wrote: > Kevin Kofler writes: > >> (and not really implementable for the live images) > > Why not? It should be reasonably easy to handle that in the boot loader. 1. Needs GRUB hackery to support transparently. (For the DVD, Anaconda can detect the architecture and install a kernel accordingly, but for a live CD, we don't have any such support.) 2. Not enough room on a CD for the extra kernel. And it doesn't solve the real issue anyway. Kevin Kofler -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@redhat.com https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
