Re: amd64 into mainstream
On Mon, Apr 18, 2005 at 10:07:55AM -0400, Ed Cogburn wrote:
[snip in various places]
> Does EM64T only add the 64 bitness, and not the extra 8 gp registers?
No it does add the instructions, but it is also a P4 with whatever
baggage that brings along and it certainly seems that it wasn't designed
from the ground up to be a 64bit cpu, unlike the K8 processors. It is a
different implementation of the same instruction set and features, with
different benefits and disadvantages. In the case of the K8 it seems in
64bit mode it is much faster at some things (and it isn't slow in 32bit
mode at all), while the P4 seems to only really gain the advantage of
the extra registers and the penalty of moving around larger pointers.
At least that is my impression, but since I don't work for intel, I
can't say anything about how a P4 actually implements the 64bit
extensions.
> And if Ubuntu takes hold Debian may *never* become a good choice for the
> desktop, that is what I fear, and that would mean abandoning Debian. :(
There are many people that really don't care particularly much about
desktop anything. I suspect they are often the people that make debian
work. Not always but often.
> Depends on how well Canonical does. If they continue to gain the momentum of
> "The Desktop Debian", then in a few years they may be even in a position to
> fork Debian all together, or stop supporting compatibility on the package
> level, if Debian itself doesn't respond to the momentum that Ubuntu is
> feeding on.
Well I sure hope Debian does not decide to trade in quality for speed.
If it can increase speed of development and release without a drop in
quality, then sure I am all for it. But it's not a trade I would be
willing to do if a trade was requried to get it. So I am sticking with
Debian, including for my desktops (I have no problems with running
windowmaker, kde, gnome, or whatever windowmanager happens to load that
session to manage my xterms and web browsers and that is really all I
care for the window manager to do).
Lennart Sorensen
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