Re: Support now in dpkg
On Thu, 3 Jun 2004, Chris Cheney wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 03, 2004 at 11:03:42AM -0500, John Goerzen wrote:
> > This list is misleading at best. Would you say that I am not actively
> > working on the pure64 port, despite having created an installer
> > specifically for it and the first dual-purpose i386/amd64 installation
> > images?
> >
> > What about those posting tarballs for installation purposes?
> >
> > I dare say that others are probably preparing patches or helping out in
> > other ways even if they are not uploading to alioth.
>
> Yes, there are at least several others that are helping out, some of
> which may be primarily working on multiarch. And of course the people
> helping out via answering questions on the list, etc.
>
> The others I know of are:
>
> John Goerzen
> Tollef Fog Heen
> Hugo Mills
> Mattias Wadenstein
Since my name was mentioned, I'm in favour of "amd64". The trademark issue
is not an issue as discussed on irc yesterday, since we have a statement
from AMD that their prefered name for the port would be amd64, since that
is the current name of the architecture, instruction set, etc.
Now, we're not deciding name based on AMD's preferences, but rather on
what would be the best name. Both x86_64 and x86-64 have delimiters that
might mess up either software or humans (debian-hurd-i386 sonuds like a
3-way delimited name, so there could be debian-hurd-somethingelse too,
want to rename i386 to debian-x86-32?).
>From a simple look at the name as such, "amd64" is much better since it is
easier to spell and remember. I suspect it would be easier to handle for
the majority of users instead of guessing if there should be a '-' or '_'
between "x86" and "64" in a particular context. Or for that matter
pronouncing "x86-64".
The one downside I've heard besides the more-or-less rough matching
kernel/toolchain names is that Intel might not like it for marketing
reasons. Well, should we chose a worse name because of a CPU-vendor's
wishes? That would be even worse than chosing "amd64" just because AMD has
stated a preference for that name. (Worse since AMD actually has published
the architecture and instruction set.)
/Mattias Wadenstein
Reply to: