How long will 64bit Ubuntu users have to wait?

[Tollef Fog Heen]

Matt Zimmerman skrev:

> Mixing of 32- and 64-bit software (at least on x86_64 systems) is a special
> case, as it attempts to address what is inherently a temporary problem.  It
> is very likely that desktop systems will standardize on the x86_64 platform,
> and when there is enough momentum behind that transition, it will become the
> standard development platform as well.  At that point, there will be no need
> to use 32-bit software on your desktop, and technology for supporting mixed
> systems will be obsolete.

AMD64 systems are one of the few where we will see a full transition to 
64 bit (since it's less register-starved than x86 and therefore usually 
faster, even though pointers and longs take up more space and therefore 
uses more time to be handled).  Other supported architectures like sparc 
will stay a 32/64 bit mix for the overseeable future.  They want 64 bit 
for postgres and similar applications which can benefit from > 3GB of 
memory, while most other applications will be slower in 64 bit mode than 
32 bit mode.

Not that interesting for Ubuntu (at least not yet) is also the 
possibility to use multiarch for doing ports to other systems such as 
NetBSD where you could then just port the apps which make NetBSD NetBSD 
(libc, kernel, the kernel-specific bits of userspace), but run the whole 
GNOME stack with Linux emulation.

- tfheen