i386 images

[Dimitri John Ledkov]

On 25 October 2017 at 23:40, Jeffrey Lane <jeff at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 6:03 PM, Dave Walker <davewalker at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>> Server actually made this call before Desktop :) ..
>>
>> We tried to drop it back in 12.04..  this was the first release where we
>> tried to introduce wacky stuff on the installer (MAAS etc).
>>
>> We kept seeing user issues with i386 installs, the most memorable being:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/962992 (I proxied that
>> bug report on behalf of a very experienced internal user)
>>
>> We also saw people deploying 32bit virtualisation platforms, and being
>> frustrated to learn they could not run amd64 guests.
>>
>> Discussing with our users, it turned out that many of them were using 32 bit
>> because they thought it was the most appropriate download "as they were
>> running on Intel not AMD" and such.  So we tried to make the 32 bit harder
>> to get.
>
> To be fair, I have never understood why Ubuntu went with amd64 instead
> of x86_64 which is the more generic term.  amd64 always meant the AMD
> implementation of 64bit, vs the Intel implementation called EM64T.
> x86_64 was the generic term.
>
> But I came into that from Red Hat back when x64 first started
> appearing and there were separate builds for amd64 and em64t before
> being finally ported into one x64 build referred to as x86_64, so for
> me, x86_64 or x64 was always the generic 64bit extensions to x86,
> where amd64 specifically referred to the AMD extensions.
>

amd64 suffix is a dpkg arch name. And as you all are well aware 64bit
port of that architecture was created by AMD, not intel. Subsequently
they did a mutual guranteed cross-licensing of the IP amd licensed
64bit port to intel, and intel licensed 32bit port to amd. But yeah,
this is like such a long time ago, way before my time, and the x86_64
"generic" term i guess came after?

Thus amd64 is historically correct, yet in practice now kind of useless =)

I like the dpkg arm64 port name... it is just a useful name. That's a
nice troll.

-- 
Regards,

Dimitri.