Re: 64-bit transition deadline (Re: Etch in the hands of the Stable Release Managers)
On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 01:34:37PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > <quote from previous mail in debian-release>
> > - Use win32 + PAE. This allows your program to run in the vast majority
> > of computers, and provides the biggest profit in the short term. I hope
> > this approach will be the most common, and expect it'll sustained for long.
>
> Limited to 2 or 3GB ram per application, even though the system itself can
> have more than 4GB ram. Hardly a solution for a lot of applications.
You forgot the "+PAE" part.
> > - Use a 64-bit platform. Which one?
> > - win64 is so utterly broken that none of the former win32 users wanted
> > to migrate. As a consequence, there's practicaly no userbase.
>
> Actually I wouldn't say win64 is broken, it just has a serious lack of
> drivers, which of course will continue as long as nobody is using it.
> If microsoft wanted to solve this they should mandate 64bit drivers
> along with 32bit drivers in order to certify a driver for vista.
They do that already, but it doesn't work for a lot of hardware:
- old hardware that was already sold, and for which the vendor may not even
exist anymore.
- hardware from small vendors that can't afford the cost of certification.
The truth is, that there's a huge mass of unsupported hardware out there, and
nobody in the win* userbase is pushing for 64-bit drivers since they all use
win32. Vendors just don't care unless MS forces them. And even if they're
forced, they have no genuine interest in high-quality drivers, which may
result in unstability, etc.
The fact that Microsoft has chosen to remove win64 completely from the retail
boxes for Vista is very significative.
> > Those who go the PAE way are totaly irrelevant. Someone (including microsoft)
> > is going to make a lot of profit exploiting the decadent 32-bit + pae market,
> > but sooner or later it'll collapse.
> >
> > Those who go the "clean" 64-bit way will have to make a choice to determine
> > which will be the dominant OS on this new platform. Their main concern will
> > be (as always has been) userbase. If our userbase is bigger than win64's
> > (and that's not too hard), x86_64-linux-gnu will be stablished as the standard
> > system and the gradual replacement of 32-bit hardware will render microsoft
> > obsolete.
> > </quote>
>
> Well just because hardware is 64bit capable doesn't make it not 32bit
> capable, so obsolete may be too strong a word.
It doesn't really matter. If we win the 64bit battle, when microsoft wants to
migrate to 64-bit, they'll find that this niche is already occupied, and that
the reference API is another one. Then they can clone us if they want to try
something :-)
> > This date is easily predictable. There won't be a "big" migration at that
> > time, but the decision of which will be the reference 64-bit platform will
> > be taken and set in stone. After that, it doesn't matter how long it takes
> > this new platform to replace win32, if this platform is ours, we've already
> > won.
>
> Except the win64 platform does run win32 software, and backwards
> compatiblity has always won for some stupid reason.
Yes. And we're backwards compatible (wine can run win32 binaries) too. The
real problem is, can they be compatible with x86_64-linux-gnu api ?
> I just want a flash plugin that doesn't crash firefox all the time (so
> that pretty much means it can't be written by adobe obviously).
We'll surely have that for lenny. :-)
--
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