* Wichert Akkerman (wichert@wiggy.net) wrote:
> Previously Stephen Frost wrote:means
> > Yes, we know, it's different from what the toolchain and kernel use. As
> > it happens, so is i386.
>
> Strangely enough my kernel, toolchain and dpkg all use i386.
Oh, really? That's why the kernel says i686 and gcc says i486?
> > Guess they must be pimping everyone. Of course, I hope that on the
> > ports page, regardless of the port name we use, it points out that the
> > architecture was developed by AMD. Hell, if we *didn't* say that people
> > would have good reason to wonder about us and our motives.
>
> Except for a small minority people couldn't care less. I don't see
> a start page documenting that Sun developed Sparc, or DEC developed
> the alpha either, do you?
I'm glad most people couldn't care less. I can't believe there's people
who havn't got anything better to do but waste a bunch of time for the
rest of us over a purely political issue to move us to a *less*
technically good name.
What start page? I said the *ports* page, which lists out such things
as:
Intel x86 / IA-32 ("i386")
Motorola 68k ("m68k")
Sun SPARC ("sparc")
Alpha ("alpha")
Motorola/IBM PowerPC ("powerpc")
> Playing devils advocate one could also argue amd64/x86-64 is just a
> 64bit extension of the ia32 architecture intel developed. See how this
Sure, but it's different enough to be reasonably new, and certainly
things compiled for it specifically won't work on ia32 normally.
> whole debate is pretty much useless? Bringing in politics will only
> result in heated discussions while we should be focusing on other
> things. We should just pick a name that will not confuse people (and
> realize that in a few years amd might only produce a minority of 64bit
> chips after intel catches up), which includes it should be one that is
> used elsewhere (think toolchain and kernel) as well.
Right, bringing in politics is useless and counter-productive, so why
are you? Choosing amd64 isn't political, it's the argument about what
to call it and why is political. I agree that we should just pick a
name that will not confuse people- that's not x86-64/x86_64 which *will*
be confusing to people as to which it is or will cause problems with our
various tools. That leaves the *other* popular name, and what the
creators of the architecture call it- amd64. This is basically what we
came to a year ago and has been just fine ever since. Now people want
to bring up politics and try to force a change for political reasons.
Stephen
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