[CVALE] Running x86 programs on a 64 bit processor...

[Matt R Hall]

Landon,

I am with Robert on this one-- let's back up a level and see what got
you into the 64-bit vs. 32-bit debacle to begin with. What were you
actually trying to do in the first place? What use case are you trying
to fulfill? Maybe this came out someplace in this thread or another
but I missed it. For that I blame my psychotic schedule.

On the filesystem topic Pete brought up earlier, I can say I often
disagree with Pete but greatly respect his opinion because he is a
well-known open source expert. This is one case where I really did
appreciate his witty comments on Debian's 64-bit incompetence! :-) As
Pete already knew and pointed out quite appropriately, Solaris blazed
the trail back when 64-bit Linux distributions were a twinkle in our
eyes and already properly solved the 64-bit library issue the way he
suggested, by creating a second tree where the 64-bit libraries are
placed. Most Linux distributions such as the RH products Pete
mentioned wisely followed suit for reasons I'll try to list below.

(BTW Pete please chime in if I didn't get this part right, but this is
the view I've gotten from my time as a Solaris developer at a Fortune
500). I believe the RH approach to this issue makes more sense than
Debian's approach because it preserves backward compatibility with
32-bit applications which are likely to remain popular for many years
due to the fact they take fewer resources to execute and generally run
faster unless there is a demand for a very large address space inside
the program.

I summarize Debian's political problem thusly: to misquote
Montesquieu, sometimes with a hundred thousand arms they overturn all
that is before them, and sometimes with a hundred thousand legs they
plod about like insects.

They can be unnecessarily or inappropriately obstinate about following
standards such as file system trees even when it clearly makes more
sense to make a special exception, such as 64-bit computing, where
special cases apply that are not normally present.

I am going to apply Occam's Razor to this bad decision and therefore I
suggest that, rather than the rather tinfoil-hat view Pete put in his
mail about dislike for Drepper and RH, that the Debian developers are
such serious open-source idealists, that backward compatibility is
utterly irrelevant to their use cases so they just ignored that
consideration in their choice or discounted its importance
excessively. I have to say I can't always tell when Pete's poking fun
because he seems to tread a fine line between seriousness and
tightly-layered sardonic mockery, so maybe he wasn't totally serious
in that part of his mail and I'm taking him too literally. I'll let
him explain in more detail about that point if he wants.

My two cents--
Matt

On 5/11/07, Robert Grunsky <evilmegaman at gmail.com> wrote:
> if you compile source code you will get a 64 bit binary out of it. so if you
> have the source, that's the best possible situation. but yeah it's pretty
> much all coming back to me now. landon, if you're wanting something like
> flash or something, just look for an open source alternative like gnash. (I
> hear gnash can do youtube now) so yeah just stick with the stuff you can
> compile or get 64 bit versions of unless you have no other choice.