Re: Confusion about 32/64-bit user space
On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 04:31:06PM +0200, Franz Georg K?hler wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 10:11:46AM -0400, Ben Collins <bcollins@debian.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Aug 20, 2002 at 02:28:21AM -0400, Scott Robert Ladd wrote:
> >> I am a tad confused here, so bear with me...
> >>
> >> Okay: I have an Ultra 10, on which I've installed Debian 3.0r0. As I
> >> understand it, the kernel operates in 64-bit mode, while any programs I
> >> write and run operate in 32-bit mode. Is that correct?
> >>
> >> Is there anyway to change user space such that it is 64-bit?
> >>
> >> This came up when I built gcc 3.2; the configure script couldn't figure out
> >> my installation. As it is explained to me by someone in the gcc mailing
> >> list, what I managed to build was a 32-bit version of the compilers, given
> >> that my user space is 32-bit.
> >>
> >> Why isn't user space 64-bit by default? Is it that many GNU/Linux programs
> >> aren't compatible with 64-bit?
> >
> > You don't want 64bit userspace is very very slow compared to 32bit. The
> > only reason you would want 64bit binaries is if a single program needs
> > to access > 4gigs of memory (note, this has nothing to do with just
> > having > 4gigs of memory).
>
> What is solaris' behaviour on this?
Solaris has 64bit libs available (default is 32bit), and a 64bit build
environment. Just like we do.
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