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Debian Votes on AMD64 in Sarge
JayBonci writes "According to a message sent to debian-vote, there is now a GR on the table as to whether or not to include AMD64 into the upcoming sarge release, even though it violates part of the LSB (Linux Standards Base). The debian-vote list has more discussion on it. Does this best meet the needs of the users?"
The GR is rescinded -- Chris Cheney rescinded his backing of the GR, so it doesn't have enough sponsors.
Of course, if another Debian developer would sponsor it, it would be re-added and the whole process would start anew.
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Not to troll here, but I doubt we will see many machines giving way to IA64. The more likely route would be x86_64 - AMD's extension to the IA32 architecture allowing for 64 bit operations. IA64 is basically what powers the Itanium line, and well, it has been a collosal underwhelmer....
Personally I just got my hands on an Athlon 64 and have been toying with it. 64 bits aside, the integrated memory controller really makes it fly for a lot of number crunching goodness. I also read an article just today reviewing the 3800+ socket 939 chip - and it beat the highest end Prescott chip (on the newest 925x motherboards) in every benchmark. When Intel decides to get all its ducks in a row we might see more interesting performance from the chips coming down the pipe.
Back on topic. I don't think Debian necessarily needs to include AMD64 support in Sarge. Granted, it would be nice and many people would appreciate it being there. It will most certainly be showing up in the future unstable branches as well as many people will have patches, how to, and other reference material. There are plenty of choices for true AMD64 support out in the Linux world. It isn't a matter of Debian supporting it (or LSB for that matter), but more a matter of when.
No, IA32 machines will give way to AMD64 machines. IA64 died with Itanium.
Additionally, LSB 2.0 sets out specifications for AMD64 ports. However, it is still in public review, and is not the current standard. This is a problem for Debian, which has (up until now) always gone out of their way to do things "by the book".
Random and weird software I've written.
Yes and no.
... 64bit kernel wants to run 32bit XFree86 binaries ... it must use 32bit versions of all the Xfree libraries. On the other hand, 64bit kernel wants to run 64bit Xfree86 binaries ... the XFree libraries must be compiled for 64bit usage.
Yes, the AMD64 chips can run 32bit code even when the kernel is 64bit. But to run an app in 64bit mode you must have 64bit compiled libraries.
Example
Therefore you have to have 64bit libraries and 32bit libraries. You can't run a 32bit application with the 64bit libraries and you most definitely can't run 64bit applications with 32bit libraries.
The 64bit kernel in all the above cases would still be a 64bit kernel, but there are app dependencies.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
The article was misleading. LSB is quite compatible with amd64. The incompatibility alluded to in debian is incompatibility of the ia32 subsystem with the LSB for ia32. It's like saying that debian ppc is incompatible with the LSB because when you run an ia32 emulator that imports the filesystem from the host, the resulting system image is not LSB conformant.
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