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Re: greater popularity of Debian on AMD64?



On Sun, 2012-09-09 at 23:06 +0200, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> On 9 September 2012 16:49, Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote:
> > On Sat, 2012-09-08 at 22:46 -0300, Henrique de Moraes Holschuh wrote:
> >> But I object to "32-bit PC" and "64-bit PC".  i686, amd64, x86-32, x86-64...
> >> at least those are correct.
> >
> > But none of them are widely understood.
> 
> But they are googleable, whereas "32-bit PC" matches stuff not
> directly relevant.

I don't suggest to remove the dpkg architecture names from
documentation; that really would be unhelpful.  In some places it would
be appropriate to use both.  But press material and introductory
material shouldn't assume familiarity with those names.

> >> 32-bit PC and 64-bit PC mean nothing,
> >
> > I think a lot more people know which of those they have.
> 
> Do they, I wonder? Anyway, while it seems a nice idea to try and
> collapse the entire distinction between the two architectures into a
> single number, I'm not really sure who is helped here.

See #575760.

> The current
> architecture names are well established, also outside Debian. They're
> everywhere, in the output of gcc, packages names, library names, etc.

There are many alternate strings used: amd64/x86_64/x64 and
i386/i486/i586/i686/x86_32/x86.

> Then there's the assumption that no other architecture can be a PC?

'PC' long since ceased to mean 'personal computer'.  Servers with x86
processors are called 'PC servers' while personal computers with
cellular networking are called 'smartphones'.

> I'd say, a single unambiguous label is better than a vague label for
> marketing purposes.

Ambiguity depends on the context and knowledge of the recipients.

Ben.

-- 
Ben Hutchings
Time is nature's way of making sure that everything doesn't happen at once.

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