Re: Upcoming Debian multiarch support (amd64, sparc64, s390x, mips64) [affects sarge slightly]

[Gunnar Wolf <gwolf@gwolf.cx>]

Stephen Frost dijo [Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 02:01:11PM -0500]:
> > Getting everything 64bit will be a big problem with non-free.
> 
> One of the main *reasons* for multiarch is so that we can still support
> non-free crap and commercial crap while the rest of the system is 64bit.
> Obviously there are situations where it's useful to provide 32bit
> libraries to support these applications, that doesn't mean we should
> avoid allowing our users to have pure 64bit systems if they don't have
> non-free or commercial things which require 32bit libraries.

And it will not only help installing foreign software... Even
DFSG-free software can benefit from this. I know this has improved a
lot in the last couple of years, but this may still happen with some
programs: About five years ago, I got an Alpha system. PostgreSQL was
a mess to work with, every query triggered at least three unaligned
traps. XFree froze on average twice a week. And, yes, it gradually
became stabler, but there might still be cases of programs which
simply work better in 32-bit mode than in 64-bit. Those programs could
get flagged not to be built for AMD64, and AMD64 users would still be
able to use their i386 counterparts.

Greetings,

-- 
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.cx - (+52-55)5630-9700 ext. 1366
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