Re: AMD64 Status Update -- And Future Directions
Quoting John Goerzen (jgoerzen@complete.org):
> On Fri, Feb 13, 2004 at 12:48:06AM +0100, Roland Fehrenbacher wrote:
> > John> After all, someone that needs a lot of 32-bit apps could just install
> > John> Debian i386 today and be done with it.
> >
> > John, your arguments might make more sense in a Debian centric world, but a lot
> > of, if not most users (rather than maybe some developers) don't live in such a
> > world, and still want to use and love Debian. So maybe it boils down to the
>
> I am not some cloistered away monk of a Debian developer. I know about
> the "real world".
But you also only see your little part of the world.
> Binary compatibility is in the eye of the beholder :-)
Exactly.
> I have moved from x86 to PowerPC before, and from x86 to Alpha. I did
> not care about binary compatibility then. Why should I when I move from
> x86 to AMD64?
>
> *nix is cross-platform and has been for literally decades. That is a
> Good Thing.
It is, but you've got a problem, when you have
one or more companies who's applications you depend upon.
One application that I currently have to support, is pretty much THE
central application for the company I'm currently working for.
For example it needs Java in a specific version, which for one
I doubt I can get for AMD64 (it is too old 1.2.05b2). The vendor
ported the application to Linux and I know they have it running
at some Asian client site. It will probably take ages to get the
application ported to AMD64 and then they will certainly not use
something that will cut them off from all the legacy/commercial
stuff they depend upon (Sybase/Oracle libraries, numerical libs etc.)
So from my perspective pure AMD64 is but a toy (a nice one I admit),
whereas a biarch is something I could actually use at work to build
up compute nodes in addition to our Sun E6800 cluster.
> In this case it is, because I believe that multiarch on this platform
> has no real long-term future :-)
That depends on what you define as long-term ?
3-5-10 years ?
If you say 5-10 years, then I certainly agree, but but in any
timeframe less then that it definitely matters a lot.
Mike
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