Bug#575760: x86 architecture names are confusing
On Mon, 2010-03-29 at 02:52 +0100, Ben Hutchings wrote:
> Package: www.debian.org
> Severity: normal
>
> Various pages use the long architecture names 'AMD64' and 'Intel x86'
> for our architectures 'amd64' and 'i386'. The name 'AMD64' sometimes
> confuses users with Intel x86-64 chips, who instead download the
> installer or CD images for ia64. This is a waste of time and
> bandwidth for all concerned. The name 'Intel x86' is also inaccurate
> in that the i386 architecture runs on 32-bit x86 processors from many
> vendors.
>
> I recommend the names '32-bit PC' and '64-bit PC' - they are not
> pedantically correct, but people should understand what they mean.
> Whatever you do, please avoid any vendor-specific names (including
> 'IA32' which is almost unknown outside of Intel manuals).
FYI, I did a very quick survey...
Ubuntu use: PC (Intel x86) // 64-bit PC (AMD64)
Opensuse use: 32bit PC // 64bit PC
Fedora use: i386 // x86-64
FreeBSD : i386 // amd64
NetBSD : i386 // amd64
The statistics from the French mirror suggests Ben is right:
ftp://ftp.free.fr/stats/debiancd.monthly.201002.txt
|___ Downloads per Arch ___|
|__i386__|_amd64__|__ia64__|
DVD | 583 | 211 | 43 |
CD | 517 | 193 | 34 |
When popcon says i386 = 64800 ; amd64 = 23700 ; ia64 = 80
Either lots of ia64 users don't enable popcon, or they get ia64 by
mistake.
My 2¢
Franklin
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