Re: Who decides arch names?

["Chris Horn" <chris@beefstew.net>]

> This, I think, is a really poor substitute for discussion on the proper
> mailing lists.  I think it is deeply wrong to exclude people's input in
> such a major change simply because they are not at Debconf.

I completely agree.

>>   * it matches the name chosen by RedHat, Fedora and SuSE
>
> Though not Gentoo, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Mandrake, Shark, etc.

As was pointed out earlier, RedHat, Fedora and SuSE use x86_64.  In fact,
it seems that amd64 and x86_64 are the most popular names, respectively. 
FWIW, though, all the names listed on the ports page have hyphens, not
underscores (http://www.debian.org/ports/).  I really don't care, but I
think the name should be reached through logic and concensus.

I'm pretty new to all of this, but logically I think that amd64 should be
used only if different packages will be required for chips from different
64 bit x86 manufacturers.  If all 64 bit x86 systems will use the same
packages, though, then it makes sense to use the more generic x86[-|_]64.

Another thing to consider is the fact that the stated goal (on the ports
page, again) of a biarch userland for AMD64 is different than the pure 64
setup of IA64.  This in and of itself may provide sufficient reason to
differentiate the two architectures.


Chris Horn.