ia32-libs [was: Bringing Wine into Main]

[Przemek Kulczycki]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 1:15 PM, Scott James Remnant
<scott at canonical.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-12-17 at 10:21 +0000, Przemek Kulczycki wrote:
>
>> I'm wondering if we really need a full 64-bit OS and all applications at all.
>> In [Open]Solaris, only the kernel and some apps are 64-bit, and the
>> rest is still 32-bit because being 64-bit doesn't give them any
>> advantage.
>> I know it's out of scope of this discussion, but maybe instead of
>> having a separate full 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Ubuntu we could
>> try a Solaris way and make a one hybrid 64-bit/32-bit os?
>>
> The primary difference is that Solaris was written for the SPARC
> processor, in which the 64-bit line is an evolution of the already
> performant 32-bit line.

But Solaris/OpenSolaris for x86 has one universal version for both x86
and x86_64 - there's only a different kernel booted when 64-bit
processor is detected.

> In the Intel world, there are some substantial differences between the
> 64-bit and 32-bit architectures.  One of the most notable is that the
> 64-bit architecture has many more registers available than the 32-bit
> one.
>
> This means there's often a performance bonus for even the smallest
> application.

Ok.

-- 
## Przemysław Kulczycki >><< Azrael Nightwalker ##
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