Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 9, 2004 6:13 UTC (Thu) by bos (guest, #6154)
Parent article: Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Certainly, a typical desktop machine isn't going to see much advantage from running a 64-bit distro (whether it's Fedora or anything else), simply because most people don't need the extra address space, and wouldn't notice a few percent of performance difference one way or the other on most typical apps.

Indeed, since some popular apps (e.g. notlame) contain hand-coded 32-bit inner loops, the x86_64 versions can be relatively slow, because they currently fall back to generic C code.

That said, specialist users have needed 64-bit systems for years - ever wondered why Sun dominates the EDA market? - and now they have the opportunity to switch to Linux. Or at least they will once the ISVs pull their thumbs out, which should happen over the next few years.

On a final note, Ladislav says "Unlike Debian, Fedora doesn't offer a possibility to install the 32-bit part of the system into a separate, "chroot-ed" environment" as if this were somehow a good thing. The Debian approach to 64-bit support is suboptimal, since (a) it's incompatible with the x86_64 ABI and (b) it forces you to jump through hoops to run 32-bit apps.

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 9, 2004 10:31 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

"(a) it's incompatible with the x86_64 ABI"

That's not true, no. Debian x86_64 variant pure64 is fully compatible with the x86_64 ABI published by the LSB, both way.

"(b) it forces you to jump through hoops to run 32-bit apps."
That might look like hoops, but it is much more cleaner and powerful since it let you install any packages (not just libraries) in the variant (32,64 or both) of your choice.

Beside, chroot is a wonderful technology with Debian and it deserves to be more widely used.

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 9, 2004 12:00 UTC (Thu) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (6 responses)

That said, specialist users have needed 64-bit systems for years - ever wondered why Sun dominates the EDA market? - and now they have the opportunity to switch to Linux.

Because, of course, Linux has never worked on UltraSPARC or anything, and certainly has never been able to run 64-bit userspace apps there.

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 9, 2004 17:25 UTC (Thu) by bos (guest, #6154) [Link] (4 responses)

Linux has worked on UltraSPARC for years, fully 64-bit.

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 9, 2004 23:01 UTC (Thu) by xorbe (guest, #3165) [Link] (3 responses)

I think nix was making a joke.

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 10, 2004 7:36 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (2 responses)

The phraseology made the mild sarcasm fairly clear (or at least I hoped it did; obviously not clear enough).

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 13, 2004 20:36 UTC (Mon) by knut (guest, #4309) [Link] (1 responses)

Well, every joke/sarcasm contains a grain of truth :-)

Have a look at the Linux Ultra FAQ, question 1.5:
(http://www.ultralinux.org/faq.html#q_1_5)

5. Is everything 64-bit on sparc64, and can I compile 64-bit applications ?

The kernel and kernel modules are 64-bit on sparc64, userland is still 32-bit, and in fact the same as on sparc32. The conversion between native 32- and 64-bit function calls is being done via the kernel. Allthough you can compile a kernel with egcs64, you can't really use this compiler for building 64-bit userland binaries. See also "Why can't I compile certain software on my sparc64 ?" in Section 9.

Best regards,

Knut

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 14, 2004 23:38 UTC (Tue) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

That FAQ entry is grossly outdated. GCC-3.2+ is able to compile 64-bit apps perfectly well on sparc64 (my kernel is compiled with 3.4.3 as are most of the 64-bit apps I use, and none show any ill effects).

I deleted the ancient egcs-19980921.1 compiler nearly a year ago, and haven't missed it once.

I have a number of 64-bit apps and libs here (XEmacs and dependencies, Octave, the backup program dar(1) which eats address space for breakfast), although the majority are still 32-bit (and will stay that way, because 32-bit stuff is generally faster than 64-bit stuff on UltraSPARC because all the instructions and pointers are smaller so it keeps memory fetches down).

Fedora Core 3 on AMD64

Posted Dec 10, 2004 21:01 UTC (Fri) by jzbiciak (guest, #5246) [Link]

(sarcasm noted)

Just because there's Linux on UltraSPARC doesn't mean people flock to it in droves. I'd imagine many places with a large deployment of SPARCs also have Sun service contracts, and so run Solaris.

EDA software on x86/x86_64 is what'll bring Linux to these people.