Promoting i386 version over x86_64?

King InuYasha ngompa13 at gmail.com
Thu Nov 19 01:47:57 UTC 2009


On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 7:27 PM, Kevin Kofler <kevin.kofler at chello.at>wrote:

> Gregory Maxwell wrote:
> > I noticed that http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora appears to be
> > strongly promoting i386 Fedora over x86_64. Is this intentional or an
> > oversight?
>
> This is, sadly, intentional. I and others have been complaining about this
> for months, we got ignored, all in the names of making things work for
> people who are not smart enough to figure out whether their computer is 64-
> bit or not. The argument that almost all new non-netbook machines are
> 64-bit
> anyway also got ignored.
>
> IMHO, the right solution is to make the 64-bit edition the default download
> and to work on making the error message people get when trying to install
> it
> on a 32-bit machine nicer: "We're sorry, but your computer is too old to
> install this 64-bit version of Fedora. Please download the legacy 32-bit
> edition instead."
>
>        Kevin Kofler
>
>
Is it right to call 32-bit legacy though? As it is, the Intel architecture
doesn't seem like a true 64-bit architecture. It seems more like it extends
the 32-bit arch and wraps 64-bitness around it.

In any case, 32-bit shouldn't be considered legacy until every type of
computer sold is 64-bit. And the fact is, that isn't true. Netbooks are
entirely 32-bit currently, and a majority of low end desktops are still
32-bit only.
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