"Only" for closed-source programs? [LWN.net]

"Only" for closed-source programs?

Posted Jun 24, 2004 10:40 UTC (Thu) by forthy (guest, #1525)
Parent article: The 64-bit question

I'd beg to differ. There are several reasons to run a mixed 32/64 bit system, even if you don't run any closed source program at all. The most obvious are the following:

You are a developer, and you want to create and test binaries for both 32 and 64 bit system without rebooting.
The free software you want to use has assembler parts which haven't been ported to x86_64 (yes, this happens, not everything can be written in GCC, think of a JIT).
The free software you want to use does support x86_64, but has some quirks there which don't show up on the 32 bit version.

For me, all three things are true. I'm a developer, and I don't want to reboot for testing 32 bit programs. The software I develop has assembler code parts, which don't work on x86_64 yet (that's because I'm still developing). Ah, and where it does work, it has quirks.

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