On Wed, 2004-04-28 at 09:13, Tom Gall wrote: > Let's review where some of the the other distros are at and what they > are doing for x86_64 as well. Everyone (and I mean everyone) has the > ability to run both 32 bit and 64 bit code.
For x86-64 and ia64 this makes sense. There are a good number of non-free binaries out there -- though I must admit that Debian traditionally gives non-free binaries the cold shoulder. Those of us running ppc have long gotten used to doing without any of those non-free binaries. There isn't any compatibility benefit to supporting 32-bit stuff. It's only a matter of performance: do you want 1 glibc in RAM, or 2 of them in RAM? > The design choice is what is > the "default" mode. IE if a user just calls gcc, are they going to get > a 64 bit app, or a 32 bit app. Install something like apache, will it be > 64 bit or 32 bit... etc etc. > > 1) SuSE SLES 8 for PowerPC64 - Default is 32 bit That may be, but they did manage to compile a number of packages as 64-bit. This isn't another case of slapping a 64-bit kernel and libc on a 32-bit install and calling it good. If you really want a 32-bit userspace, remember that you can simply run a 32-bit distribution. > 2) SuSE SLES 8 for x86_64 - Default is 64 bit > 4) Gentoo/ppc64 - Default is 64 bit Well, that looks like the thing to run on a Mac G5. Gentoo is planning ahead and keeping things simple. Alternately, run a pure 32-bit system. Why not? Let's not complicate things for no good reason. > 5) Gentoo/x86_64 - Default is 64 bit > 6) Redhat Enterprise for PowerPC64 - Default is 32 bit > 7) Redhat for x86_64 (fedora) - Default 64 bit > 8) Redhat exterprise for x86_64 -Default 64 bit
