Re: 64-bit transition deadline (Re: Etch in the hands of the Stable Release Managers)
On Mon, Apr 09, 2007 at 05:20:34PM -0400, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> > The fact that Microsoft has chosen to remove win64 completely from the retail
> > boxes for Vista is very significative.
>
> No, they include it in ultimate (it has both DVDs)
Ultimate is not targetted at the consumer market.
> and they will mail it
> to any customer for cost of shipping it if you want 64bit instead.
So you have to buy the retail CD, then send your request for a 64bit version,
and wait a week or so without being able to use what you just bought? How
many people are going to do that?
> I
> think they mainly did it to avoid tech support calls when something
> doesn't work for 64bit.
They did it because it's not ready. If they were confident that they had a
usable [1] product, they wouldn't make users jump through hoops to get it,
since they know perfectly that they need to increase their win64 userbase.
[1] and the requirements for win32 vista were already quite low, it seems
> > 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 :-)
>
> Well I think users of applications like solidworks, lightwave, maya,
> etc, just might use win64 and be quite happy with it. Not a huge
> market, but not nothing either.
That's fine. And they can have servers too. They're just not ready for the
consumer market, in which you have to support a gazillon of hardware devices
whose drivers or specs are not under their control.
> I doubt this will be small enough that
> linux can automatically win the 64bit OS market. And if people start
> demanding 64bit support they will find a way to get a machien that does
> work with 64bit windows and get the applications they want.
There's no demand for it. The average user is not like a free software
developer. They don't want to try something that's barely tested and has
serious problems just because. All their apps are 32-bit, so they gain
almost nothing in compensation.
> > 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 ?
>
> Why would they care to be? That isn't their market.
If x86_64-linux-gnu is stablished as the new reference api, well, they'll
be forced to.
--
Robert Millan
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